


The Improper Princess

by Ealasaid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dragons, Enchanted Forest Chronicles AU, Fantasy, Gen, Princess Dean Winchester, etc - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 06:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2641247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ealasaid/pseuds/Ealasaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean went out on a hunting trip, and if Sam wasn't on the other side of the continent at wizarding school, he'd have noticed when his big brother hasn't been home in a few days. Weeks. Whoops...</p>
<p>[Enchanted Forest Chronicles AU where Castiel is a dragon and Dean is his princess.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Running into Dragons

Dean wiped the flat of his blade wearily off on what was left of the werewolf’s fur, groaning as he stood up and the full extent of his newly-acquired bruises was revealed in a flurry of complaints.

“Fuck you too,” he grumbled, lightly kicking the body. It’d taken more of a fight than he’d expected to take it down. But hey, the job was done; now he could collect the gold from the village and skip off to the next hunt. Maybe it would be near enough Sam’s bloody wizard university that he could drag his nerdy little brother out on the town for a couple nights.

Dean Winchester, hunter-for-pay, made his living traveling through the continent and relieving small villages, towns, settlements, and suchlike of monsters and various other supernatural phenomena. Cheaper than a knight—who were often too preoccupied with “following tradition” in their challenges and who deemed anything below giants and full-scale goblin incursions not worth their time—and also somewhat more practical than a wizard—who were also expensive and often so wrapped up in academia they were mostly useless in the real world while they geeked out over monster-of-the-week and got themselves or their partners killed—Dean’s occupation was the happy medium where he would not only be willing to take on anything (provided there was something paid) but he was also able to charge for the miscellaneous protections spells he’d also picked up over the years, and didn’t have to go through an extremely expensive education to get there. It usually paid enough for him to live off of and also send a decent sum to Sam for his wizardly university fees, and if Dean was ever short, well, he knew how to hustle decently at practically any alehouse, too.

In the meantime, he was a day’s walk back down the mountain to the village, picking his way through the forest as best he could. Not only was night coming on fast, but it looked like a storm was brewing—the two fingers on his left hand he’d broken a couple years ago were aching. Sam had told him a while back that it had something to do with “barometric pressures” or something, but all Dean really cared about was that when they gave that particular bone-deep twinge, it meant some crazy stuff was brewing in the clouds overhead.

Thunder rumbled, a little ominously. Dean slung his sword over his shoulder over the bag of holding he’d brought (carrying some food, flint, his collection of spell ingredients that were hard to find, a fishing line, a small sewing kit, a copy of the latest almanac, extra clothing and weaponry, some bits of jewelry, coinage of various regions, and various other odds and ends), looping the sack with the werewolf’s head in it to his belt. Yeah, he wasn’t looking forward to spending a night with the creepy thing, even if the cold weather would keep it from starting to stink a while longer.

Everything in order, he reviewed the spots he’d seen on the way up that might translate to decent shelter and came up with a very short list of “overhanging rocks” and “spots with a couple fallen trees” as he loped through the scraggly pines. The wind picked up, and a flash of light in the corner of his eye, which probably meant lightning. Then more thunder and wow this was not good at all if it was shaping up to be a real _storm_ storm.

The trees almost seemed to sigh as the rain came only minutes later, a few drops pattering the trees and then the ground, and Dean looked up just as it turned into a deluge. He cursed and ducked under the nearest conifer, squinting around in the hopes that something might turn up.

And—there, a little ways up from where he was, where the rock of the mountain suddenly rose out of the earth and tress clinging to the side of it. There was a crack, or something, that was dark; it looked like a small cave, or at least a place he could get out of the wind. Which, now that it was whipping up, would be a _really good thing_.

Dean headed for it, scrambling half-bent under the low branches of some of the trees. A minute more of thunder, practically shaking the ground under his feet, and he was precariously edging up the steep rock to the crack, which was starting to look more like a decent entrance to something and less of a situation only minutely better than staying in the open.

A few more feet up and up, and he had his hands on the edge. It felt like there was, at least, something of a ledge and he hauled himself up and onto it.

The crack was just a little bit wider than he, but low, and he had to duck slightly to fit. It was dark, though, and he couldn’t make out much more than shattered grey granite before lightning flashed and something let out a deafening crack. Dean flinched forward, but his next step was into empty air and he stumbled forward and onto a steep and rocky slope down. The missed footing had him tumbling down it like one of those acrobats in the traveling troupes and oh shit _what had he done to deserve this?_

Another few hectic moments where he was smacking into walls and stones with parts of his body he didn’t know he had—and a brief instant where he landed awkwardly on his side and something cracked on the spur of rock he hit—and he hit something even, landed flat out, and stayed sprawled there, wind driven completely out of him. That was okay, because Dean was seeing stars and also wasn’t quite sure where up was.

Something whistled.

_Shit_ , Dean thought, unable to freeze. He continued wheezing instead and tried to formulate a plan for getting up and drawing his sword.

“What a _lovely_ princess,” someone said brightly from in front of him.

… _what?_

“That is _not_ a princess,” a second voice smarmed to his left.

“What?” Dean choked out, finally able to work his lungs in a manner conducive to speech.

There was a rustling noise to his right. “It is pleasing to the eye,” rasped a third voice from that direction. “Aren’t princesses pleasing to the eye?”

“I’m not a girl,” Dean snapped, insulted, and immediately felt stupid. The voices in front of him and to his left laughed and snorted, respectively.

“It has a sword,” said the left. “Are you an adventurer, then?”

The voice on the right, meanwhile, was quietly asking “Are all princesses girls?” to which the voice in the middle said “I’m just joking. Princesses are usually female, though, at least for their culture.”

“I—what—” Dean stammered, confused, but willing to let them talk if it bought him time to wiggle his sword free without them noticing. “No, not really an adventurer, no—”

“Why do you have a werewolf head?” the raspy voice asked, sounding curious.

“I bet he hunts monsters,” the one in the middle interjected. “Do you hunt monsters?”

“Pitiful,” the one on the left snorted. “A species that can’t defend itself on an individual basis.”

“Fuck you too,” Dean muttered under his breath, firmly of the belief that the guy on the left was a total douche.

Dead silence followed it, broken by a savage hiss from said douche. Dean froze, hardly daring to breath, realizing he had made a terrible mistake: just because the bickering sounded too individualistic and human did not mean that the monsters in the cave were any less monstrous.

The thing in the middle hooted with laughter, drowning it out. “Oh stop it, Zachariah,” it said jovially, and there was a whapping noise. The one on the left—Zachariah—let out a yelp. “You’re being rude to our guest!”

“It insulted me,” Zachariah hissed. “I want its head!”

The thing on the right shifted, sounding uncomfortable. “Bite me,” said the one in the middle at the same time, sounding businesslike. “You can’t have him.”

Dean was starting to like whatever was in the middle. In the sort of ‘at least it doesn’t want me dead’ way.

“It is within my rights, Gabriel!” cried Zachariah. “You can’t keep me from doing it!”

“Brothers,” said the raspy voice resignedly in an undertone, suddenly much, much closer. Dean flinched and felt hot breath stir his hair as Zachariah and Gabriel continued to argue. Whatever these things were, they were big. “Please don’t draw your sword. It would be construed as an act of intended violence.”

“Well,” Dean said cautiously, quickly calculating the effectiveness of fighting when he had no surprise on his side and no idea what he was facing. “I mean, I _am_ a monster hunter, it’s kind of my job…”

Something tugged the sword out of his grasp. “Sorry,” raspy voice said apologetically, “but it’s better if I keep this for a while.”

Dean lay there and ignored the sudden fear he felt sharply in his stomach. It contrasted nicely with the throbbing of his ribs.

“You’re not going to eat him, Zachariah,” Gabriel said, sounding irritated.

“Well we can’t let it _go_ ,” snapped Zachariah. “It’s from the wrong side of the mountains and it knows we are here. It also insulted me. I think I have every incentive to eat it.”

“What the hell?” Dean said, starting to feel very anxious. “Who the fuck am I going to tell? ‘Oh I fell in a crack on a mountain and had a conversation with three voices,’ what’s the harm in that?”

No one actually answered him, but there was a brief moment of silence after it.

“I think eating him would be very impolite,” the raspy one eventually said above Dean, and… what?

“Now you’re getting in on this?” Zachariah fumed. “This is ridiculous! Be quiet while your elders discuss things, Castiel, and keep out of this.”

“Oh shut up,” interrupted Gabriel sharply. Dean felt something bump his leg as the raspy one—Castiel, apparently—shifted again. “Tell me, Castiel—what do you think we should do?”

“I think you should let me go,” Dean grumbled, but very quietly. He decided lying down sucked, that he wanted to finish this situation in a slightly less idiotic position, and started working to sit up.

A long, dexterous sort of wiggly thing carefully wrapped around his chest, just under his arms, and helpfully pulled him upright with minimal effort on Dean’s part and before he even had a chance to freak out about it. Dean sat still for a very brief moment before shakily crossed his legs and bracing himself up with his arms as his ribs twinged unpleasantly.

“I think he is—excuse me,” Castiel broke off suddenly, “but do you have a name?”

“Who, me?” Dean said, startled.Monsters that were conversing—moreover, arguing—like people? That was weird. Having them observe proper etiquette? Even weirder. And disturbingly un-monsterlike.

“Yes,” said Castiel. Gabriel snickered. Dean found himself crossly subtracting all the awesome points he’d been giving the guy in his argument with Zachariah.

“Oh. I’m Dean. Dean Winchester.”

“I am Castiel,” Castiel said politely. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Uh,” Dean said. “Nice to meet you, too?”

“I think Dean Winchester is injured,” Castiel said, beginning again, “and certainly intended us no harm before arriving here and being presented the threat of being eaten by Zachariah. I see no reason to kill him.”

Okay, so Castiel didn’t seem too bad either. Dean could work with that.

“See? Castiel has such a sensible head. I agree with him,” Gabriel said mildly.

Zachariah huffed. “And I suppose you’re going to take care of it?”

“Rude, much,” Gabriel said, sounding gleeful. “But no. I think darling Castiel here should take him.”

Dean felt the long slender thing that had settled loosely around him after sitting him up twitch as Zachariah hissed “ _What_?” Maybe it was a tail? He hoped it was a tail. The alternative—tentacle monsters—was just gross. He touched it surreptitiously; it was warm and covered in small hard things. Scales?

“I don’t understand,” Castiel said sounding as confused as Dean did while Zachariah made spluttering noises. Dean felt as though things were rapidly getting away from him, though, and piped up before someone could answer.

“Excuse me,” he interrupted, trying for polite and coming out demanding, “but can I just say I’d rather be let go? I don’t exactly want to stay, you know. I have a life.”

“Oh I’m sure you do, kiddo,” Gabriel said condescendingly. “But here’s the problem. You’ve run into us. We have a policy of leaving no witnesses. Capiche?”

“Oh come on,” Dean snapped, frustrated. “I haven’t even seen you, how the hell can I witness you?”

“Oh, as if!” Zachariah snapped back. “Fine. You’ve _heard_ us, you know our names. You know we’re here. Standard case of us becoming known to you in a first hand manner.”

Dean was tired, his ribs ached, and he had literally no idea why his eternal imprisonment was suddenly a thing. “Bullshit,” he snarled. “Just put me back up on the ledge and I’ll call it quits. I never saw you, I never heard you, nothing.”

“Mmmm, you say that now, but how can we be sure?” Gabriel said cheerfully, either ignoring or enjoying Dean’s bad temper. “But hey, we’re not actually asking you. It’s up to Castiel. What do you think, little bro? You don’t have to, but if you don’t Zachariah will probably eat him.”

“I’m not sure if I have the proper accommodations for a human,” Castiel said, sounding unsure.  The tail shifted a little. Dean patted it absently and it froze briefly, before relaxing.

“That’s okay, I can lend you a couple things from my hoard,” Gabriel answered instantly.

“Then I suppose it would be all right,” Castiel said after a marked pause, sounding doubtful.

“Oh that’s just great,” Dean said sarcastically, feeling any sentiment for the polite monster dwindle sharply. “What am I, a pet?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said promptly. “Congratulations Castiel! You have your own princess.”

Dean sputtered. “I am not a princess!”

“I don’t think Dean Winchester likes that,” Castiel said calmly. “Could you please refrain from upsetting him?”

Gabriel chortled as Dean sucked in a breath to begin haranguing them before coughing it back out as his ribs protested sharply. He hissed in pain and spent a minute or so trying to put his head back on properly.

“Your ribs have been badly cracked,” Castiel observed when he could pay attention to more than controlling his breathing. The tip of the tail touched Dean’s side lightly where the pain felt the worst, and he felt it throb once before fading. “Does that feel better?”

“Uh,” Dean said, startled. He poked his side in the same spot. “Um. Yeah. Did you fix them?”

“No,” Castiel said. “I’m no great healer, but I can take you to someone who is tomorrow. At the moment, though, we should go to my den before Gabriel and Zachariah have spread the news and others come looking.”

“Oh, are they gone?” Dean looked at the blackness around him—as though he’d be able to see anything anyway.

“Yes,” Castiel said, faint hint of amusement in his voice. “While you were coughing.”

“Huh,” Dean said. Sneaky monsters. “I don’t suppose you can look the other way while I climb back up that ledge, do you?” Dean asked hopefully.

“I’m afraid not,” Castiel said. He sounded apologetic. “This outcome is undesirable on both our parts, but were I to allow you to escape so blatantly I would be punished severely for permitting such a danger to the garrison to exist. Zachariah would have too much fun with that.”

“Fuck,” Dean said, frustrated again. He was stuck alone in the dark with a monster of some sort, who was also under the impression that it was his owner. Life was just great. Dean slammed his fist onto the ground and swore again.

Castiel ignored this. “It’s a ways to walk, and I can’t carry you,” he said in his raspy voice, “but I think it might be possible for you to sit behind my neck while I walk there; would that be more comfortable?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Dean said flatly, completely out of the ability to be polite, “but I don’t fucking know because I still don’t know what you fucking look like!”

“You mean you can’t see me?” Castiel said, sounding surprised. “I thought you were just exaggerating to argue against Zachariah.”

“No I can’t see what you look like, we’re in the dark,” Dean snapped, out of patience. “I can’t see shit in the dark!”

“Oh,” Castiel said, and then there was light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, here it is. Two years in the writing and _even now_ I'm revising it, but I figured I'd better just post this thing anyway.


	2. Learning About Dragons

Dean clapped a hand over his eyes. “ _Ow!_ ” he cried as it blinded him.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel said, sounding distressed. “Let me dim it a little, I didn’t realize you needed time to adjust.”

Dean blinked, and squinted through his fingers until they’d adjusted enough that the now-dimming light was tolerable. “That’s—that’s enough,” he bit out, pulling his hand away. “I’m good—oh, _shit_.”

Castiel was a dragon.

Dean stared at him, shell shocked. Dragons were just _legends_ , hadn’t the last one been killed centuries ago?

Castiel was a delicate sort of thing, kind of like a cat in the way he had hunched up on himself: all proportionate slender limbs and tightly furled wings. His forelimbs were small and ended with lengthy claws, but his hind legs were huge and heavily muscled. His coloration was a sort of dark, dark gray— _charcoal_ , Sammy hissed at him in the back of his head—that deepened to black at the tips of things, with black spines and finny bits and horns. To contrast, his eyes and belly scales were a bright, light blue.

And Castiel wasn’t small, either. The cave they were in—which was much bigger than Dean had thought—arched high overhead, ceiling disappearing back into gloom out of the range of whatever light Castiel had pulled out. The dragon looked to be something like seventeen feet from black-tipped nose to rump, with an extra nine feet of slim, curling tail that had several more wide black fins; dwarfed by the size of the cavern, and not giant-sized, but Dean never had seen one of those anyway.

But the most dangerous power of dragons, it was whispered amongst hunters, was that they weren’t actually monsters. Big and scary, yes, and prone to stealing livestock (“fair game in my book” Dean recalled one gruff old colleague grumble despite never seeing a dragon in his life), but also incredibly intelligent: masters of ancient philosophies and wizardries, both. The High King’s astronomical clocktower in the capital was popularly attributed to the mysteries of draconic lore.

“Holy shit,” Dean said belatedly, completely derailed from his frustration into something disturbingly like awe. “You’re a _dragon_.”

Castiel tilted its head at him. “Yes?” he said, confused. “What were you expecting?”

“I, uh…” Dean paused, working his mouth a couple times before the words came. “Well, actually, I really don’t know.”

“We haven’t been to the east of the mountains in several centuries,” the dragon said thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s why.”

“Uh, maybe,” Dean stammered, still wandering the levels between awe and shock. “I mean, we’ve only got legends of you guys, I don’t think… I’ve never heard of someone actually running into one, or at least killing one, not that I know of—”

“So you _are_ a monster hunter?” Castiel asked, cutting off the stream of babble.

“Oh. Um, yeah.” Dean gingerly stood up, feeling (irrationally) totally underdressed. So maybe he geeked about dragons one or twice, that’s no reason to think they’re awesome when they _kidnap you_. “I was hunting the werewolf. It was preying on the village by the base of the mountain and I happened to be in the neighborhood, so…”

“How interesting,” Castiel said, sounding fascinated. “Here, let me help you up—” he knelt, tucking one of his feet up to make a handy stool,  and his tail nudged Dean closer to the hollow between the fin of shoulder spines and the base of his neck.

Dean blinked before remembering that oh, right, he was supposed to ride the dragon to the dragon’s house, and moved when Castiel made an enquiring sound, scrambling a little clumsily up the smooth scales to throw a leg over while Castiel tugged him in place with his tail and oh gods he was _riding a dragon_.

“What else have you hunted?” Castiel asked politely as soon as Dean was in place.

“Just the usual run of things,” Dean said, weirded out by the fact that his autopilot in this case was having casual conversation and ferociously brought his thoughts back to the task at hand: escape.  Castiel got out of his crouch, startling him, and started forward silently through a passageway behind a sheet of rock. The light bobbled along beside them. “Uh… Ghosts are the most common, but we also get a lot of werewolves and other shapeshifters. A couple years ago there was a nasty vampire outbreak up to the north, but there was also a demon infestation far south and that’s where me and my family were at the time.”

“So you’ve met demons, then?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty nasty buggers…” Dean trailed off as they came to a fork in the tunnels, making sure to mark which one they took. If he could get away, maybe he could sneak out. “Killed my parents.”

“I’m very sorry,” Castiel said, and then demonstrated how difficult it would be for Dean to keep track of where they were going by taking two rights, a left, and going down a tunnel sloping into the ground all in quick succession, before coming to a huge chasm that yawned open beneath them. “Also, hold on for a moment, we need to get across this.”

He spread his wings, and leaped. Dean, taken totally by surprise, groped at the ridge-less neck on front of him, hands skidding off hard scales. He could feel himself slipping off and it was _terrifying_ and no no no this is not how he wanted to go and—

Castiel beat his wings and they were no longer falling, they were rising. Dean’s stomach stopped trying to upend itself as soon as his body stopped trying to slide off and he finally got a solid grip on Castiel’s neck with his legs.

“Gotta give me better warning next time,” he yelled to Castiel, voice only _slightly_ moderately higher than normal. “Shit, dude, that was _not_ okay!”

Castiel’s voice whipped through the wind to Dean. “Sorry,” he was saying. “We’ll be over this in no time.”

No time turned into a ten minute flight surrounded by blackness. Dean had just managed to get his heartbeat back to something relatively normal when they sloped down again, and Castiel started to spiral slowly, seemingly in place. From the gloom, a floor rose up.

“It’s not too far from here,” Castiel said, landing neatly with a precise backwing that had Dean lurching unsteadily in his seat. “I took the back entrance. I’d prefer not going through the common rooms, or at least not until you are settled and things have been explained.”

That definitely didn’t sound good. “Explain what things?” Dean demanded as they started down a much smaller tunnel that branched off less frequently than the tunnel on the other side of the chasm. “And what the hell was that—a freaking canyon in a set of caves?”

Castiel gave a slight shrug, which translated to his hide rippling under Dean in the weirdest possible way. “Just a cliff. It’s the largest open space in this range; it used to be part of a dwarvish city, but they left a long time ago. Around the time that we withdrew from the east; we were wary of the expansion of human civilization,” he said neutrally. “Our king deemed that these mountains and the lands to the west were sufficient for our purposes.”

“Why did the dwarves leave?” Dean wanted to know. He bet the dwarves had a way up the cliff.

“Probably because we declared the territory ours,” the dragon said, sounding dry. “They weren’t too happy about it, but after the city was destroyed they fled.”

“Wow. You wanted to get it that bad?”

“Some people were pretty upset about moving out of the west, yes.”

“It wasn’t a popular move?” Dean asked, reaching a little.

Castiel rumbled. “You could say that,” he agreed. “While Gabriel himself ordered that I take you, there are some who would be content to act first and submit themselves to his judgment after.”

“So I’m what, a dragon’s chew toy for politics?” Dean demanded heatedly, disliking the idea immensely.

Castiel was quiet. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “It is not my place to question Gabriel as the leader of my garrison, and I don’t know him well enough on a personal basis to allow me to draw conclusions about his actions.”

Dean sat back, comfortable enough with the loping dragon gait that he didn’t have to concentrate on staying on top of Castiel anymore. “Huh,” he said, as they rounded another curve and took a left through a low opening that had Dean crouching on top of Castiel to keep from being scraped off the ceiling. “Bit low here, isn’t it?” he said, voice muffled by the scales under his nose.

Castiel grunted as he edged out of the small space and into a much larger area. The glow zipped up to the ceiling and brightened; this next room was at least thirty feet high and very wide. “In another decade or so, I might be too big to squeeze through.” He dipped down and it was a moment before Dean realized that Castiel was waiting for him to get off.

“No more sneaking out, huh?” Dean said dryly as he slid off.

“With luck, I will be transferred to one of the new caves they’re hallowing out closer to the western edge of the mountains,” the dragon corrected, shaking out his wings and refolding them as soon as Dean was out of range. “As it is, it takes a half-hour of climbing up before there’s an opening to the other side from here.”

“That’s inconvenient,” Dean remarked, and turned his attention to the cave they were in.

The width was, obviously, due to Castiel’s wingspan, and it looked as though the dragon could spread his wings without cramping up; though Dean wasn’t sure exactly what Castiel’s wingspan was. The floor was bare rock, smoothed out and even due to long use. One corner had a noticeable depression in the floor, and the walls around it were covered with sturdy-looking wooden shelves stacked high with, of all things, _codices_.

Dean was impressed by the sheer quantity, especially when he noticed that most of the other walls were similarly adorned. Before he knew it he found himself inspecting the nearest shelf closely, fingers lightly trailing through some of the bindings. Most of the spines had titles in languages he couldn’t even recognize. “My brother would have a field day with these,” he said, amazed despite himself.

Castiel shrugged again. “It’s a rather modest collection,” he stated as fact. “I tend to hoard literature exclusively, but what I have here is nowhere near as extensive as it could be.”

 “Well hey, this’s more codices than I’ve ever seen,” Dean said. He sort of wished Sam could see these, even if he did have the fancy wizard university library at his fingertips.

“I don’t have much in relations to human furnishings,” Castiel rumbled from the other side of the cave—these dragons could move spookily quiet through these mountains, jeesh—and Dean turned to see the dragon tugging some rolls of what looked like rugs out from another opening into the room they were in now. “I hope these are acceptable alternatives for a bed, at least, and I can rearrange some of the shelves to give you a little more privacy, but I’m afraid I don’t have enough space for alternate accommodations…”

“Uh,” Dean said, feeling like he should start getting really suspicious about how damn polite the dragon was making an effort to be. “That’s fine, man, I’ve slept on worse.”

Castiel flicked his tail. “As you will,” he said. “Place them where you would like in here and I can move the shelves later. However, I have some errands I need to make, if you don’t mind; please don’t stray out of my den. The wards will prevent anyone from getting in, and until I’ve explained matters to my neighbors I’d rather you not give them the opportunity to get rid of you.”

“Uh,” Dean said again, not sure how to follow that up.

“I will return in several hours or so,” Castiel said calmly, and slid out of a third opening, leaving Dean alone in a dragon’s den.


	3. Getting to Know Dragons

The den was exceedingly clean. Dean honestly wondered how the hell it could be so tidy—and how the floor could not need sweeping in the slightest—but that led to thoughts about captive princesses, which brought up Gabriel-the-dragon’s jibs, which sort of had Dean wondering whether dragons kept human accoutrements the way some people in the larger cities valued accessories for their pets.

Dean set his stuff (minus his sword—Castiel hadn’t given it back, and Dean wasn’t actually too sure where it was at this point, which sucked because he’d gotten that sword from his dad and talk about the importance of family heirlooms) by the rugs the dragon had dragged out and explored the layout of Castiel’s den instead of pursue that thought further. The den was the large room with the codices, another room about half that size filled with other odds and ends (including a sizeable heap of glittering honest-to-god treasure), a third room about the same size as the second room that was clearly a sort of rough dragon kitchen (which had small ventilation shaft in the top—Dean wondered if this was a standard feature of all dragon dens and whether or not there was a miniature ventilation shaft network), and a sort of entry hall to the exit Castiel had left through. The walls of that (and the back entrance, it turned out) were decorated with an elaborate series of painted symbols. Dean only knew enough to tell that they were most likely related to the wards Castiel had spoken about.

Meanwhile, the relative chill of the cave was starting to make itself known. The long journey through the mountain had been cold, but Dean had still been coasting on an extended adrenalin high that blocked the most of it; here in Castiel’s den he started to shiver, realizing his clothes were still wet and not conducive to comfort considering the circumstances. In the end, he managed to get a fire going in the weirdly-sized kitchen and draped his clothes out on the hearth, wrapping himself up in the blanket in his bag of holding and grumbling by the fire as they dried. Before he knew it, Dean fell asleep, propped against the wall.

So _of course_ the first thing he saw in the morning was Castiel, attempting to drag a fat buck into the room as quietly as possible.

Dean must’ve made some sound—hopefully it wasn’t that unmanly squeal he thought he’d heard—and jumped about a foot in the air. Castiel in turn froze ever so briefly, looking for one precise instant both utterly confused and profoundly shocked before the tension transmuted itself into a sort of wary and non-aggressive stance. He neatly deposited the dead buck to one side and said, “Good morning, Dean Winchester. I’m sorry if I woke you.”

Dean was made aware that his mouth was gaping open when the only response he could manage (was it really that early?) was an unintelligible sort of “Guh.” He was scrambling, trying to piece together the situation—which was so far from normal that he was having trouble recalling the specifics—but hey, then Castiel did some sort of quizzical head tilt like a bird and it was so surprisingly endearing that Dean continued to forget for another couple seconds that he was actually the captive of said dragon while he snickered a little at the humorous picture it made.

Castiel blinked at him, and Dean could almost see him attribute Dean’s amusement as another human foible or something. The dragon gestured to the massive buck instead, and said “I was out hunting. I’ve eaten already, but I thought you would appreciate something other than the stale provisions you had.”

Dean raised his eyebrows. “All that for me?” he said, eyeing the buck. It was huge. “Do you have like, an ice room or something for the extra meat? ‘Cause I don’t know what you think I need but I will _not_ be able to finish all that before it goes bad.”

“An ice room?” Castiel looked at him like he was just as odd. “What is that?”

“It’s like a room for keeping things edible for rich people,” Dean said promptly. “They’re really cool but super expensive because either you need a special spell to keep things cold or you need a shit ton of ice.”

“And they preserve food well?”

“Yeah, pretty well. It’s like smoking or salting, but fancier.”

Castiel considered this. “I am not unaware of the preservation of meat through the use of the cold, but I never thought one could create rooms to mimic natural conditions within one’s den.” He frowned in distraction; the tip of his tail started flipping idly.

Dean shrugged. “Well, now you know.”

Castiel hummed absently in response. “Anyway,” he said after a moment, “eat what you will; I will deal with whatever’s left.”

Dean stared at the buck again. How was he even going to begin dressing it? Indoors was never a good idea.

“Go ahead and throw whatever is undesirable in that hole there,” Castiel was saying, pointing with his tail to a part of the wall about ten feet away from the fireplace. “It’s spelled to vanish anything that goes in it. Let me know when you’re done and I can clean the mess.”

“Oh, okay,” Dean said. He vaguely realized that this was probably the most unforeseen conversation in the history of surprise conversations and it was mostly confusing because it was so _normal_. He could be talking about this with any cockamamie farmer in the whole country whose wife was concerned about the mess inherent to butchering animals.

“Also a friend of mine is coming over later,” Castiel went on. “She’s going to take care of your ribs for you.”

Oh, right. Things had happened to his ribs. “Whatever you did is still working,” Dean commented, patting his side experimentally. He could probably butcher the deer without straining himself overly much, and if someone was coming over to do magical healing things it probably wouldn’t be too much of a risk of maiming or death.

When he looked up, Castiel was assiduously cleaning his muzzle. The dragon paused long enough to laconically say “It’ll last 48 hours” before sinking down into that freaky cat-crouch with his tail wrapped around his feet and watching Dean with half-lidded eyes.

“Um,” Dean coughed pointedly after a few minutes.

Castiel hummed inquiringly.

“Are you always going to stare?” the hunter wanted to know, not a little unsettled.

“I have never met a human princess. You are interesting.”

Dean huffed sharply. “I am _not_ a princess.”

Castiel made this hideously terrifying face that seemed to show all of his teeth at their pointiest all at once. It wasn’t until he noticed the tail flipping in amusement that Dean realized it was what the dragon passed as a smile.

“Great,” Dean complained to nothing. “You’ve got a sense of humor. That’s just peachy.”

“I like peaches.”

“See, that’s what—” The hunter looked at him. “Oh, you’re not… that wasn’t a joke.”

Castiel smiled again, all teeth. Dean gave up.

Dressing the deer was surprisingly easy. Though it hadn’t been strung up anywhere the carcass had surprisingly little blood; the deep, messy punctures in the neck gave Dean a sneaking suspicion that Castiel had taken care of that. Maybe deer blood was the draconic idea of a delicacy or something.

He slit the skin down the belly and up the inside of each leg, and wrenched it open to make a convenient ground cloth so the area wasn’t completely disgusting when he finished the job. With that taken care of, he pulled out the offal: the small and large intestines, the bladder, kidneys, the stomach, the heart, the lungs, and other bloody bits. These he tossed into the hole in the wall as per Castiel’s instruction. The liver he set aside to grill when he was finished with the job.

Dean began by carving out some steaks and setting them in a dripping pile on one corner of the hide. He severed the legs and lay them flat, and got to work carving up the rest of the meat.

“You’re very skilled with your knife,” the dragon commented halfway through Dean’s butchering of the ribs.

Dean grunted, bracing himself to leverage the ribcage apart. “Practice,” he said shortly. “When I can’t get work hunting monsters, I can usually sell what I catch for spare cash.”

“So you simply travel from place to place, looking for work?”

 Castiel was sketching things on the floor when Dean glanced over. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “You know, sometimes we hear things and we go check ‘em out. And sometimes it’s not anything involving monsters, and there’s only so much hustling can get you, you know?”

“I don’t hustle,” Castiel said.

“Really? You’d probably be good at it. You’ve got a good poker face.”

“What is poker?”

“…really?” Dean asked incredulously, looking up to see with his own eyes that the dragon wasn’t lying.

Castiel paused his sketching to do that head-tilt-thing. “Should I?”

“Oh, god,” Dean said.

At that point they were interrupted by a chiming noise; Castiel’s head swiveled something like 110°, which was totally weird, but then he said “That would be Anael” and went to let her in.

Anael turned out to be an exquisite creature, all apple red and daffodil yellow. She was both longer and thinner than Dean’s dragon, but still gave off the impression she could royally screw over anything that tried to attack her. Castiel’s cat-like manner looked to be a common characteristic of dragons, because she moved with the same effortlessly sinuous movement that Dean had observed the night before and this morning. When she saw Dean, she paused and cocked her head exactly like Castiel did.

“Anael, this is Dean Winchester,” Castiel said. “Dean Winchester, this is Anael. She is particularly talented in the arts of healing.”

“Uh,” Dean said. Was he supposed to bow? He settled for a nice sort of half nod and threw in “A pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” she said, voice lightly amused and incredibly fascinated. Seeing how she looked at him like he was some sort of highly collectible toy, Dean figured she hadn’t seen many more humans than Castiel before now.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything?” she asked.

“Not really?” Dean offered, before realizing that she was probably referring to the mostly-butchered carcass he was sort of working on still.

“Dean Winchester was demonstrating how humans preserve food,” Castiel said gravely.

Anael looked interested at that. “Oh really? How do they do it?”

“They have cold storage rooms to keep food frozen until it is time to serve it.”

“Or we smoke or salt it,” Dean added, scraping the worst of the mess off his hands and standing up. “Cas’s been scribbling on the stone over there, I bet he’s been coming up with something like it.”

Anael swung her long neck over to peer at the floor Dean had indicated; Castiel stared at Dean, which meant Dean had just done something completely baffling.

“Oh yes,” Anael was saying, “it looks like you’ve got something here. Maybe if you increased the x factor to ten, you could reconfigure the hypothermal energy circuit to be more efficient?”

“Perhaps,” Castiel said, breaking the look. “I was just about to construct a prototype. I can show you the result when you finish healing Dean Winchester.”

Anael nodded. “Of course!” She turned to Dean. “I’m so sorry, Dean Winchester, of course you are the priority here. Now, let me see what happened to you.”

In the next moment, Dean was abruptly surrounded by red and yellow scales, with Anael nosing his side curiously.

“You can just call me Dean,” he said belatedly, pulling off his shirt so she could huff a breath over his gaudily bruised ribs.

“As you will,” Anael said, yellow eyes starting to look pretty glowy. “Now why don’t you lie down while I fix your ribs?”

Dean, hesitating only a little, complied. He watched with fascination while the glow of her eyes spread to the rest of her hide and she hummed quietly. Taking his cue from Castiel, he stayed quiet.

After a minute or two, the dragon’s hum intensified steadily until it seemed that everything—Dean, the dragons, the cave, life in general—was buzzing with it. It was highly disconcerting. Dean gritted his teeth (ignoring the weird sensation of vibrating dentition) and very, very carefully did not move.

Heat radiated from the side that had been injured and from other little spots where he’d gotten bruises and cuts. They all abruptly hurt, a lot— _ow_ —and then everything felt like it jolted around which hurt even worse, and then the whole thing stopped.

“That’s better,” Anael said with satisfaction. “You can move now.”

“Do you have full range of movement?” Castiel wanted to know, peering at Dean from over Anael.

Dean swung his arms a bit and did some stretches. Nothing twinged unpleasantly or pulled painfully.

“Yeah,” he said, surprised at how good he felt. Fuck yeah, magic! “Everything’s moving great. Thanks, Anael.”

“My pleasure,” she said, eyes glowing again. “And please—call me Anna.”

“Okay,” Dean said. “Thanks, Anna.”

“Thank you, Anael,” Castiel said. “I’m very grateful you took the time to come see to this.”

“Well it was worth it to meet your princess!” Anael said airily. Dean twitched. “Everyone’s been buzzing about Dean here. It’s just so incredible—a human, after all this time!”

“I am not a princess,” Dean said, exasperated.

Anael cocked her head, apparently unbothered by his rudeness. “But aren’t princesses pleasing to the eye?” she asked.

“Apparently the term ‘princess’ is gender specific to human culture,” Castiel said apologetically. “The male analogue would be ‘prince’.”

“Well you can’t keep a prince,” she said firmly. “Everyone knows that.”

“But I’m not a prince either,” Dean said, feeling a little helpless.

“That’s why you qualify as a princess,” Castiel told him. “Under draconic law, at least.”

Dean opened his mouth, and thought better of it. Obviously this wasn’t getting anyone anywhere.

“Right,” he said instead. “Forget it. I’m going to get back to this job, though, if you don’t mind…” He waved at the deer carcass.

“Yes, please go ahead,” Anael said quickly. “Castiel was going to show me his refrigeration unit.”

“Yes,” Castiel said. “I’ve got the pattern spell here; let’s go look for a suitable vessel. I think I have something in my hoard…”

A while later—much later—after Anael had left with a final, close look at Dean, Dean ate the liver and one of the steaks, and Castiel had produced a small leather trunk now equipped with a refrigeration spell that kept the interior at freezing, Castiel brought up the matter of magic. He also brought it up over chess.

“I hate this game,” Dean grumbled as Castiel took his king for the second time in half an hour.

“You lack discipline,” Castiel informed him, setting the board back up. “But please, what do you know of human magic?”

“Um,” Dean said, frustratedly trying to decide which of his pawns to move first. “Not a whole lot. I’m not very good at it. All you really need is a spell—anyone can do it with a spell—but most magic users don’t exactly tell anyone what their spells are. Gives ‘em more power or something.”

“But you can learn can’t you?” Castiel asked, tip of his tail twitching idly as Dean made up his mind and decisively employed his knight instead. “Can you ask them to teach you?”

“Uh-huh,” Dean said. “You can apprentice to ‘em. That’s when you pay them a lot of money and they take you on as like, a personal assistant. But that’s rare, finding a lone practitioner who’s willing to do that.”

“So how do people learn how to do it?”

Dean made a face. Castiel sure liked his questions. “You can do what my brother’s doing,” he said. “You can go to the university. There’s a big one in the capitol. It’s stupidly expensive, but if you have enough money you can get an education in general magic in six years. When you’re a student, you get access to the university libraries, and those have _lots_ of codices of spells. Sam—my brother—he’s studying in a smaller one down south, and every time I visit I have to haul him out of the library just to get out and live a little.”

“Hmm.” Castiel pushed a pawn forward a space. “So your brother is better than you at magic?”

“Yep. Always was smarter than me,” Dean said blithely. “I can do warding spells and spirit summonings pretty well, but that’s mostly just knowing your sigils and stuff. Nothing real heavy duty.” He also pushed a pawn forward.

“Your play is confusing,” Castiel said calmly. “Check in ten. Is that why you hunt monsters?”

“What, being bad at magic? Naw. That’s just the family business. Learned it from my parents—my mother’s whole family were hunters. Dad took up with it when he met her. Before that, he was a soldier.” He moved his knight out further.

“Where are they now?” Castiel wanted to know, before deploying his wizard.

Dean suppressed a scowl. “Dead,” he said shortly. “Sam’s all I’ve got left.”

“I see.” Castiel was quiet for a moment. “Well, I wanted to know if you would be averse to instruction in dragon magic. It would make things a little easier on everyone.”

Dean stared at him. “You’d teach me dragon magic?”

“Of course,” Castiel said, blinking at him. “It would help you get around my den, for one, and in the off chance that someone took offense at you… well, you’d have better odds against them.”

“Huh,” the hunter said. He mulled it over. “And you’d trust me not to use it on you?”

“Hardly,” Castiel said mildly. “But I think even with your training it would take a while before you were able to fight me and win.”

Dean didn’t doubt that in a fair fight, that would be true. And even if the magic wasn’t anything super offensive, he could probably still put it to good use at some time, which meant this was totally okay. (Not to mention, there was a certain appeal to how Sam would react if Dean pulled out some crazy-ass shit he didn’t know anything about.)

“Well,” Dean said, “it’s fine by me if you want to do that. It’d pass time, that’s for sure.”

“Excellent,” Castiel said. “We can begin as soon as this game is over, then.”

And they did. The game ended a measly ten minutes later, and the dragon launched straight into an overview of the evolution of draconic magic and the different areas to which it applied.

“And obviously a lot of it relies on a dragon’s innate power,” Castiel was explaining, “which is inherent to all dragons, but the magical theory isn’t too difficult to learn and in knowing that, you can counter or block most spells.”

“Knowledge is power,” Dean agreed, and they went off into different runes and sigils and the meanings behind them. Castiel ended up pulling out a series of tomes in Common that contained several lexicons of a vast number of them. With the learning contained in these codices alone, Dean would be able to read and deconstruct virtually any draconic spell. Dean spent the next three days pouring over them and a series of scrolls with some basic spells, learning the differences in spell formulae from the human versions he already knew while Castiel puttered in and out of the cave. By the fourth day, Castiel pronounced that he was pleased with Dean’s progress, and produced several other codices on more advanced spells and ritual magic. Dean decided that for forcible captivity, Castiel’s informative and interesting hospitality was quite nice.

Warding—an area in which he already had some expertise, because knowing the wards meant that you knew how to defend yourself at night—was one of the first branches to catch Dean’s attention. In particular, defense and anti-theft wards—like the ones Castiel had. Dean might be biding his time, but he was still going to escape. He might not know exactly how to get around Castiel, yet, but knowing how to escape the dragon’s den was a significant thing in and of itself.

And so for the next week, he spent his time studying warding spells intensively and scrutinizing the formulae structures inscribed on the entrances when Castiel was out hunting or running errands, and reading through dictionaries for translation and shorthand when he was not. Dean also took the liberty of sparing a bit of time to read through a history of the mountains they were in on one of the afternoons that Anael came over for tea, and discovered a series of maps detailing the dwarfish tunnels. To his delight, there was indeed a stair climbing up the cliff Castiel had sailed over, though it appeared to be quite precarious.

Sometime after like two weeks of living with Castiel—who continued to be commensurately polite—Dean stumbled upon a spell that changed everything.


	4. Escaping from Dragons

Well… not a spell _precisely_. It was more of an intriguing theorem involving twisting the matrices of a spell to form a self-sustaining Mobius loop, with a page of addenda codicils on variants that included energy efficiency—including one that took the force exerted by people or things interacting physically with the spell if the spell manifested in physicality. With a little tweaking, Dean could build it into a warding circle that would not only trap Castiel, but also become stronger the more Castiel struggled in it.

The trap required quite a bit of prep work, so Dean had to wait for a time when Castiel would be out of the den for a while. The time he went out hunting was the best option; since dragons usually ate every three or four days, it was the best forseeable chance Dean had to pull things off. That meant it would either happen tomorrow or the day after.

All very hush hush, Dean put his stuff together. Some of it had gotten a little spread out as he inhabited more and more of the den, but a few hasty minutes stolen here and there when Castiel’s attention was diverted were sufficient to collecting it all as well as locating some spell ingredients. Dean tried to keep his cool—dragon senses were already super crazy sharp, and it would be pretty awkward if Castiel caught on that Dean was up to something.

The next day came. Midmorning, as Dean was immersed sketching out some variants for a heating spell, Castiel got up, stretched, and said his customary “I’m going out to eat. Will you be satisfactorily occupied while I’m gone?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” Dean said, playing it cool. He looked up from the book he was copying from. “I’m on heating spells, it’ll take me a while.”

“Excellent,” Castiel said, and was gone.

Dean waited a few precious minutes—just for safety’s sake—before flying into action. Hurriedly he snagged the relevant jars and boxes from Castiel’s hoard, several lumps of chalk from the kitchen, and three large, fat candles from one of the cupboards.

Next, he painstakingly drew out a basic ward circle spell diagram on the floor to the main entrance with the chalk. Dean was putting all his eggs in one basket here, but Castiel hadn’t come back from hunting through the back door yet, so he figured he was safe setting the spell up in the front. The diagram took about half an hour to complete; though it was literally the simplest circle diagram out there, Dean had to add the more complicated codicils evenly within a third ring between the exterior ring and the interior pentacle. Once he was completed with the chalkwork, Dean thriftily tucked it into his bag of holding and moved on.

The next part was trickier. In the center of the main pentagram Dean placed a couple of the scales Castiel had shed, found in odd corners of the den or between the pages of codices, along with a chunk of salt, an unset cut aquamarine he’d pilfered from Castiel’s hoard, an eagle feather Sam had given Dean two years ago he’d kept in his bag, and a sliver of one of Castiel’s favorite codices. He set the three candles around the edges of the diagram, marking off the points of an invisible triangle, and lit them.

Facing the main entrance from across the trap, Dean took a deep breath and said very clearly the draconic word for trap three times.

The white chalk started to glow.

“Sweet,” Dean muttered under his breath, and then added the last part of the improvised spell in Common, because he didn’t know the dragon for it and the theory implied it didn’t matter. “I name you a trap for a dragon named Castiel,” he said firmly. “Trap him. Hold him. Do not let him go.”

The candles flared dramatically. It was really cool.

“ _Khalas_ ,” Dean finished.

The trap glowed brightly, and went out. So did the candles. The lines of chalk and the miscellaneous stuff he’d put in the center all disappeared.

“Show time,” Dean said, and got rid of the candles. He grabbed his stuff and settled by the back entrance, ready to make a break the instant Castiel walked into his spell. Dean itched to leave, but the risk of running into Castiel in the tunnels or leaving a trail for Castiel to follow before he came back and walked into the trap was not one Dean wanted to take.

It was a long hour of tense silence. Then, the entrance wards shimmered.

Dean was ready for it. At Castiel’s broken off “What—” the hunter was chipping lines through the key sigils of the back entrance’s wards and, two minutes later, he was hurrying down the passage, hoping fervently that the spell lasted long enough for him to get out of the mountains.

There were a few wrong turns—quickly corrected, although one took him ten minutes to figure out—but after an hour and a half of steady loping, Dean found himself at the base of the cliff. The staircase was nowhere in sight.

Dean hefted the small crystal globe light he’d pocketed one afternoon going through rare scrolls in Castiel’s hoard and pulled out the map of the area he’d found the other day, keeping an eye out for any stray dragons that might pop up. He quickly figured out where he was and turned to the left, and made his way along the wall.

Another fifteen minutes of brisk walking—almost a mile, damnit—and he found it.

It was very steep.

“Okay,” Dean said out loud. “This is the time for a break.”

He munched on some of the leftover meat he’d cooked up for lunch and a bit of stale bread he’d baked a day or so ago, and made sure to stretch a bit. He drank a little water. At the twenty minute mark, Dean tucked the light globe into one of his tunic pockets so his cloak would block most of the light (but he’d still see the steps) and started up the stair.

It was so steep it was more like a ladder. This was definitely going to be the most dangerous part of the escape—one slip and he’d be falling into nothing. Not to mention he was totally exposed along the wall, open to attack from almost anything when he had no arms free to wield his sword or cast any spells.

Hand over hand over hand—Dean was almost starting to wish he was back in Castiel’s den, reading about archaic runes—steps cracking every so often and setting pebbles raining down the cliff. He was making such a racket he didn’t know how no one had found him yet. Each small earthy shower sounded like an avalanche.

A half an hour crawled by, and then another. This cliff was frickin’ huge as balls. Dean’s legs felt sore, his arms burned, and he could really use another break. And then—finally, _finally_ —his hand met empty air and he was hauling himself over the edge and onto flat ground. He landed awkwardly and simply lay there, feeling like nothing so much as a pile of overcooked noodles. Belatedly, he realized the globe’s light was clearly visible, and hastened to hide it away again.

Dean spent five minutes just lying there. His muscles started to cramp as the cold of the rock ate through his clothing. The silence around him was not comforting, but at this point he figured no noise was good noise if it meant nothing had noticed him climbing the cliff.

But he wasn’t out yet. The hunter stifled the groan he wanted to make and pushed himself to his feet. Provided he didn’t get seriously lost, he guessed he had maybe another forty five minutes to get to the cavern he’d fallen into and get the hell out of these damned mountains.

Cloak pulled tight around himself, his bag, and the light, Dean hurried forward. Make this turn. Go straight here. Take the right fork. He was exhausted but he kept moving the slightest bit faster, heart pounding. Any minute now he expected a dragon to pop out, and then where would he be? And then—

He was in the cave. There wasn’t any light at all, but Dean supposed it could easily be night—he’d lost track of time after being underground for so long. Taking a chance, he pulled the light globe out and found the pile of rubble he’d slid down. “Come on, come on,” he found himself muttering as he picked his way up the slope, forcing himself to move carefully because he was _so close_ …

He paused. Something wasn’t right. Frowning, Dean held up the globe and looked at what he was climbing: a tumble-down slope of scree and loose rock. And there—where there should be a crevice—a boulder, wedged tightly.

Mother of _fuck._

“No,” he said, and then more frantically: “No, no no no _no_!”

Dean stared at it, completely frozen. His exit was blocked off entirely. He tried pushing at the boulder, but the only thing that gave was the rubble under his feet. He supposed that things blocked by dragons tended to stay blocked; and the worst part was it wasn’t even some fancy magic he could try to undo. It was plain old brute force and elbow grease.

“Fuck,” he said weakly. Freedom was right there. _It was right there_. “Fuck!”

“So egotistical,” something below him snarked. Dean spun in place and the rocks beneath him went—at least this time he just sort of slid stumblingly down instead of outright falling.

The light globe, when he pulled it out, illuminated the speaker: a long skinny looking gold and white dragon. Another unpleasant surprise was the moody, heavy-set purple and black dragon that accompanied the gold one.

“I had heard the mud monkeys had made a reappearance in the mountains,” the purple one said, tone completely disgusted. Dean didn’t hesitate to draw his sword.

“Oh, look, a sword,” the gold one cooed. “It thinks it has a chance. How precious.”

The purple one let out a long curling stream of smoke directed at Dean. “We should throw him over the cliff,” it said. “Or we could eat it. I wonder what humans taste like?”

Dean could not believe his luck. It was like this was the Cave Where Dragons Eat Humans.

“Can’t you two just, I dunno, flutter off and let me escape in peace?” Dean demanded. He wasn’t too sure about his chances with two to one odds—they _were_ dragons—so he stalled. Most likely he’d have to get up close and personal to deal anything remotely like damage, and running away wasn’t an option... yet. He still had the chalk…

“We can’t eat it,” the gold one said wistfully. “Cassie would get upset.”

“So throw it off the cliff and tell him it jumped,” the purple one said carelessly. “Then we can eat it. It’s not like Castiel is actually attached to this thing.”

“I don’t know,” the gold one warned. “You’ve been advising him to kill it ever since he got it and it’s still alive. After all, you are the paragon of a concerned friend, Uriel.”

Dean was pretty sure that last had some bite to it. Yay, more dragon humor.

“What, you know Castiel?” he said, feeling his frustration at his escape being thwarted focusing on them.

“Of course,” the gold one said, looking down its nose at Dean. “We’re in the same garrison.”

“So really, it’s like one big family,” a familiar voice said helpfully.

Dean started and looked to the source: Gabriel, who was a sort of oddly appealing orange and cream combination, and smaller than Dean would have supposed. He was dwarfed by both Uriel and the gold dragon.

“Balthazar, Uriel,” Gabriel said with sticky sweetness. “Is this a private party, or may I join?”

Balthazar and Uriel both looked unhappy, but Dean was more concerned about how Gabriel twitched a claw and dragged Dean’s sword from his hands. He bit his tongue on another curse—this was getting really old.

“Gabriel,” he said (it sounded more like a growl), striving to be polite.

“Dean-o!” Gabriel greeted genially back. “Long time no see. How’s Castiel doing?”

“Great,” Dean said, rapidly coming to grips with the fact that he was thoroughly confused no one had eaten him yet.

Balthazar snickered. Gabriel looked at Dean like he was the most hilariously weird organism in existence.

Uriel interrupted ponderously. “We were merely patrolling, _A’dil_ ,” he said deferentially. “We ran across this human scaling the Wall and followed it here as it attempted to escape.”

“Escaping, huh?” Gabriel said thoughtfully. He fixed Dean with an interested look. “How’d you make it this far?”

“Um,” Dean said, entirely unwilling to confess.

Gabriel hummed. “I need some sort of counter claim so that the motion to eat humans is dismissed,” he singsonged to no one in particular.

Dean growled. “I memorized a map,” he said reluctantly, wondering if he could avoid mentioning the magical trap. He had a feeling that it might be not so great to mention that part.

“And who gave you the map?” Gabriel asked coyly, unconcerned as the two other dragons whipped around to stare at him.

“Surely you don’t mean to imply Castiel had anything to do with this,” Balthazar interrupted angrily. “He’s far too fond of this little cretin to help it escape.”

Gabriel grinned, showing all his very sharp and pointy teeth. “I’m implying nothing,” he said pleasantly. Dean had a very bad feeling about that.

Uriel grunted in disagreement, wings rustling unhappily. “Castiel has foolish tendencies,” he said, “but he is always obedient. You gave him the orders to keep the monkey. He would never disobey.”

“And yet, here we are,” Gabriel said smoothly. “Unless you are suggesting that a human can outfox a dragon?”

Dean’s mouth opened before he thought about it. “That’s a pity,” he said, hooking in to Gabriel’s snark and wearing his best smirk, “because as it so happens, Castiel has been teaching me dragon magic. Damned if it didn’t come in handy when I trapped him in a modified ward circle.”

“Impossible,” Uriel said instantly.

“How did you get out of Castiel’s cave without setting off any wards, then?” Gabriel prompted.

Dean kept the smirk firmly in place. “I know my way around a couple measly wards, thank you very much. They’re kind of important when dealing with monsters.”

Gabriel’s grin got bigger, as if it was even possible. “Reeeeeally,” he said, drawing the word out obnoxiously long over Balthazar’s enraged hissing. “Well good for you, Dean-o. Pity you didn’t make it out fast enough—if I’d known you were leaving, I might’ve left a door open for you!”

Of course it was Gabriel who’d blocked it up.

Dean had never wanted to hill something so badly in his life as he wanted to throttle that smug peachy dragon right then.

The dragon tsked at Dean. “Don’t be like that, we were getting to be friends,” Gabriel said, all false sadness. “I was just thinking about the other humans who might fall through, that’s all. Wouldn’t want them to get trapped like you were, wouldja? I mean, I can’t even _imagine_ a world where Zachariah had a princess, could you?”

“ _I am not a princess_ ,” Dean seethed, fists clenching involuntarily.

Gabriel blew a raspberry. Dean hadn’t even known dragons could make that sound. “Nope,” Gabriel said. “Princesses would be more polite. Clearly you’re a drama queen.”

That was the last straw. Dean chucked the light globe at him. It smacked Gabriel soundly in the snout with a metallic thud.

Gabriel didn’t blink. There was a minute of shocked silence before Uriel was bristling ominously and Balthazar’s tail had started curling agitatedly before the orange and cream dragon started laughing.

“You think this is a joke?” Dean fumed, absolutely furious. “I am not a pet! I am not some, some _plaything_ for you to toy with! I have a life of my own, _separate_ from your shitty mountains and your magic and chess games and dragon politics and you have _no right_ to keep me here!”

“Might is right, kiddo,” Gabriel said nastily, and whapped him in the shoulder with his tail so hard Dean landed flat on the floor. “Now sit down and stop giving me excuses to chuck you off the mountain before one of these boys decides to eat you anyway.”

Balthazar hissed some more. “Oh, I’ve already decided.”

Uriel’s growling was a rumbling rockfall. “Do you want the head or the legs?”

“Well now we’re in a pretty pickle,” Gabriel said thoughtfully, eyeing Dean where he wheezed on the floor.

“We are?” Castiel asked, because of course he was the next one to enter this parade of idiocy. Dean looked over to see him sidling into the cavern. The effect on the company was immediate: Balthazar visibly settled with something that looked like relief, while Uriel’s growling dropped to the mild grumbling of a very distant earthquake.

“Of course,” Gabriel said mildly, looking completely unsurprised by Castiel’s entrance. “Your princess very nearly escaped, and _you_ —one of the premier practitioners of dragon magic—were completely ignorant of it.”

“I can assure you that was not the case,” Castiel said dryly. “Dean is quite clever. He tailored a basic trap spell to ensnare me specifically, utilized the resources in my possession, and executed a nearly-flawless escape. I was quite aware of it, particularly when I watched him walk out of my den after trapping me by the front entrance.”

“What, so he wasn’t lying?” Balthazar said with disbelief.

“I told you,” Dean growled.

“It was extremely well done,” Castiel told him, approval clear. “You’ve come a long way in two weeks.”

“You’ve been teaching it magic,” Uriel said flatly. “ _Dragon_ magic?”

Castiel shrugged. Dean thought it best to keep quiet.

“Well,” Gabriel mused. “This is quite the situation. Clearly there is only one solution.”

“Is there?” asked Balthazar, an entirely new emotion on display. Dean couldn’t quite place the tone, but it set his hackles up.

“Of course,” Gabriel said, deadly smooth. “Obviously, Castiel must host a dinner party!”

“I’m sorry, what?” Dean managed, just as Castiel quirked his tail and asked “Pardon?”

Gabriel beamed at the two of them. “I’ll reserve the dining hall for you. We can get out the banquet cloth and I’ll lend you my ice cream cauldron. And then we invite everyone important in Castiel’s name and they can all meet your official princess!”

“Um,” Dean said, completely at a loss for words. Uriel and Balthazar seemed similarly impaired.

Castiel blinked at Gabriel. “Is that an order?”

“No, just a strongly worded suggestion.” Gabriel poked the black dragon with his tail teasingly. “Which I fully expect you to follow. Invite whoever you like and have them gather at—shall we say nine after noon?”

Castiel shifted a little. “If that is what you wish,” he proffered. He nodded to Balthazar and Uriel. “I’m having a dinner party later; would you do me the honor of lending your presence?”

“This is bonkers,” Balthazar said flatly.

“Great!” Gabriel enthused. “Let’s do that. I look forward to seeing that new trumpet you’ve acquired, eh, Balthy?”

Balthazar squeaked. “Er, yes, er, whatever you say,” the gold dragon said, suddenly skittish. “I’d better go polish that up right for that. Yes!” He vanished.

“Better go finish your rounds, Uriel,” Gabriel said, sounding amused by… whatever had just happened. Uriel scowled, but stalked off tractably enough.

“And I’ll see you two tomorrow,” the garrison leader told Castiel and Dean, with an honest-to-god twinkle in his eye.

“You’re overdoing it,” Dean said, unimpressed.

Gabriel snickered, and flapped his tail in a sort of wave. And then he disappeared. No smoke or loud noises—he was just _gone_.

“I—” Dean broke off, suddenly aware that despite how utterly bizarre those last ten minutes had been, he was still stuck with his dragon owner… whom Dean had trapped in a magical binding for several hours to escape from.  He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I don’t even know what to say right now.”

“Gabriel tends to do that,” Castiel said dryly, and offered his tail to help Dean get up.

“Thanks,” Dean said, and paused, deciding apologetic was probably the safest route to go. “And, um—sorry about the trap. If I’d known they’d blocked this off—”

“—you’d have found a different exit and still trapped me,” Castiel interrupted, looking absolutely unconcerned. “Next time, make sure your exit is foolproof.”

Dean stared at him. “What, that’s it? ‘Do better next time’?”

“What?” the dragon said a little defensively. “I don’t like dinner parties.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eep, sorry for the wait :P I had a stack of papers to grade and teaching units to write and weird triggery things to deal with and then other things came up and Thanksgiving happened :D I hope you all had a good turkey day :)


	5. Dining with Dragons

As it turned out, draconic dinner parties actually were a thing that existed. From what Dean could tell, it involved a lot of Castiel scribbling out different seating positions for the guests and muttering under his breath to himself a lot. It also involved a trip to some hot springs for the express purpose of baths.

“Dragons take baths?” Dean asked in disbelief as they walked through one of the lesser-used tunnels.

“Of course,” Castiel answered. “We have hot springs and it would be such a shame to waste them. It’s also an important place to conduct business.”

“Really?” Dean said, interested. “That’s sort of what humans do—in the towns large enough to host a bathworks. But they have this crazy engineered system of heating involving steam and god knows what else. They’re called hypocausts.”

“We just manipulate the springs and the underground river,” Castiel explained. “What else do you know about these hypocausts?”

So Dean went off on a tangent about things like central heating and the physics of moving vast quantities of hot water and steam through the floors of buildings. He didn’t know a lot of the specifics, but he knew enough of the general overview to relay to Castiel. By the time he’d moved from the actual physical construction of bathhouses to the culture of the attendees and how cheap it was to use them, they’d arrived at the hot springs.

It was a vast cavern that had clearly been worked wider, marked by steaming pools. More crystal light globes like the one Dean had thrown at Gabriel were in wall sconces, and several large rough chunks Dean estimated were twice as big as any of the dragons present were up in the ceiling. It was surprisingly bright.

They cause quite a stir as they came in. There were maybe thirty other dragons present, from a few who were clearly very young—hardly larger than horses—to massive fellow who looked close to thrice Castiel’s size. The different color combinations were eye dazzling, as bright and glittering as precious stones.

It made Dean very glad he had Castiel next to him.

“I’m assuming most of the spring temperatures would be too hot for you,” Castiel said to him, completely ignoring the rest of the dragons. From the very slight sense of tenseness the dragon now hummed of, Dean knew it was an act. “But some of our colder pools shouldn’t be too hazardous. They’re over this way.”

He directed Dean to the pool occupied by the littlest dragons. Dean, scrupulously following his lead and pretending he didn’t care about the other dragons, leaned over and tested the water. It was hot, but not unbearably so.

“This should be fine,” he said. He looked around for a shelf or something, but of course there was none—dragons didn’t wear clothes, after all. “Is there a spot my stuff won’t get wet?”

“Just put it to the side,” Castiel told him. “I can dry them if they get wet.”

“All right,” Dean said, and started stripping down as Castiel slid into the water with a grace that belied his bulk. He shoved his clothes and his boots to one side, took a breath, and jumped in the water.

He came up gasping. The pool was way hotter than he’d thought.

“Are you all right?” Castiel asked, sounding concerned.

“Whew! No man, it’s good. Hotter than I expected, though.”

“Very well,” Castiel said, and paddled around like a dog. The baths were deep enough for the dragons to dive; Dean kept a hold of the rim just to stay in place.

“This is strange,” Dean said after a moment, when he’d gotten used to the heat. “This is so similar to the baths we have. Do you come here a lot?”

“Not as often as I used to, in recent weeks,” Castiel said, blowing water out of his nostrils. “But often enough, yes. It is a great social activity, and dragons enjoy swimming. The lake is also a popular area.”

The little dragons on the other side of the pool were clearly whispering—or what dragons passed as whispering—about them. Dean couldn’t help but grin.

“Have you ever been the center of attention like this?” he joked.

Castiel flicked his tail, splashing water at him. “Not since I won the breath-holding competition several decades ago.”

Dean cackled outright. “Yeah, I can remember doing a couple of those myself.”

“What games did you play when you were little?” Castiel wanted to know.

This prompted another long conversation comparing childhood exploits. The long and short of it was that Castiel had done almost nothing crazy except for the one time when he faked his own death and scared all of his friends, where Dean had done all sorts of crazy shit and had horrific prank wars with his brother.

They were both deeply involved in a discussion about the different pranks they had heard about when Balthazar made his reappearance, standing at the edge of the pool. “Cassie,” he greeted warmly. “I didn’t realize you liked the cold pools these days.” He slid into the water next to the black dragon.

“Balthazar,” Castiel replied, and damned if he didn’t sound pleased. “How are you this afternoon?”

“Well enough,” Balthazar told him, completely ignoring Dean. “Just getting ready for your dinner party. I thought you didn’t like those?”

Castiel flicked some water at him. “I thought it was an opportune time to formally introduce you all to Dean,” he replied blandly.

“Ah, yes,” Balthazar said, and peered at Dean. “His daring attempt at escape was most impressive, I must say.”

He wasn’t quiet about it—the nearest dozen dragons clearly heard what he’d said. The little conversation that had started up during Dean and Castiel’s early talk dried up. The silence was almost tangible.

Castiel hummed noncommittally, but didn’t actually say anything. Clearly he’d noticed the other dragons’ sudden intense attention.

“It’s a pity Gabriel blocked up the passage,” Balthazar went on airily. “You could’ve been rid of your mud monkey problem.”

“I enjoy Dean’s company, actually,” Castiel said diffidently. A dragon somewhere choked.

Balthazar looked at Castiel sadly. “Cassie,” he said sternly, “you’re talking about a _human_. Who almost got you into serious trouble, if you don’t recall.”

_That_ was a tone Dean recognized, being an older brother. The ‘You’re making stupid decisions and I’m worried but I’m not going to say that outright… yet’ tone. “I’m right here, you know,” Dean said loudly.

“Unfortunately,” Balthazar sneered.

Castiel floated calmly. “This isn’t the venue I’d choose to discuss this,” was all he said. “Would you like some assistance in cleaning your spines?”

Balthazar huffed and backed down. “That would be wonderful,” he sighed, and went back to ignoring Dean.

“What, you can’t wash yourselves?” Dean asked, maybe a little more vehemently than necessary.

Balthazar opened his mouth, probably to snark, but Castiel got there first. “It isn’t a matter of capability,” the dragon said pleasantly. “It’s more about companionship. Spines in particular are not the easiest to clean, it’s true, but we are quite able to attend to it.”

Dean subsided at his edge of the pool reluctantly. Castiel crooned something to Balthazar in dragon, and Balthazar answered; within minutes they were having their own conversation, completely incomprehensible to Dean except for a word every so often he’d learned studying magic. As he listened, Dean noticed the two relaxing subtly, until the two dragons were interacting with the ease of familiarity. It looked like Balthazar had a soft spot for little “Cassie.”

Dean liked to think he knew more than a bit about his dragon, given that he’d lived with the guy for most of a month. He knew that Castiel loved problem solving, and writing complicated spell equations, and was fairly curious about humans—half their conversations revolved around human doings. He had a strange sense of humor that was so dry half the time it was hard to distinguish from sincerity. He enjoyed Anna’s company, and was somehow friends with Uriel and Balthazar too—impossible as it seemed—and Dean could only conclude that Castiel was that kind of quiet that really means impeccably sneaky.

Obviously, though, Dean thought as he watched the two dragons snorting water at each other, he could not say he really _knew_ Castiel. Nevertheless, Dean had one of those gut feelings that Castiel wouldn’t hang him out to dry; that for whatever it was worth, the dragon did not think of Dean any less for being human. That was a rare quality in monsters (and one more piece of evidence pointing to Cas _not_ being one).

Eventually, Dean pushed those thoughts away, and tipped his head back to float for a bit. The water was awesome.

He might’ve dozed off because at some point Castiel was poking him and Dean looked around to see that the little dragons had disappeared. A quick look around the room showcased a slightly different cast of bathers, and no Balthazar.

“Time to go,” Castiel told him. “You need to go get ready.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. Shit, had he actually gone to sleep? Way to go Dean, falling asleep in a literal den of dragons. “Okay.”

‘Getting ready’ basically meant pilfering some of the finery Castiel had in his hoard. Dean wasn’t quite sure why the dragon had a magical wardrobe when the guy clearly specialized in collecting books, but at least Dean wasn’t wearing his weathered hunting leathers and everyday tunic to what was rapidly turning into a very important affair. The clothes he wound up putting on whispered as he and Castiel made their way through some of the common areas to the dining room, all silk with fine embroidery and gold-gilded stiff collars and cuffs. The belt was serviceable but handsome, exotic leather in a strange pattern; the belt buckle hid a tiny, needlepoint knife. Even the odd, ankle-high boots gleamed with gold filigree that made them stiffer than Dean considered comfortable.

“So how are you feeding all these people anyway?” Dean ventured as they entered an empty stretch of hallway.

“Gabriel has thoughtfully provided his dessert cauldron,” Castiel said immediately, as though he’d just been thinking of it. “I borrowed a tablecloth from a giantess in the valley that can create many different courses, but to decline Gabriel’s offer would be unthinkably insulting.”

“You can have cauldrons that create food?” Dean said incredulously. “And _tablecloths?_ What the—you mean I could’ve been eating things I _haven’t_ cooked for the past two weeks?”

Castiel’s head periscoped over to eye him in bemusement. “Is cooking not a cultural method of expression for humans?”

“I—yeah? I mean I guess, I’ve never thought of it that way,” Dean said, sidetracked. “I’m just not very good at it and sometimes it’s nice to get it already done for you.”

“How interesting,” Castiel murmured, swiveling to look ahead again. “So sharing others’ cooking is a form of intimacy and bond creation.”

“Uh, right,” said Dean, and decided getting back to the subject was for the best. “But what’s the magic behind that sort of thing? Does it just produce food out of thin air?”

“The theory behind it is not well understood,” Castiel admitted as they neared a large arched entryway. “I have a few of the spells at home, but it’s difficult to visualize the reactions without an example of a working prototype at hand.”

“How long are we borrowing the tablecloth from the giantess?” Dean asked, mind whirling with possibilities of enchanted cooking pots for traveling or wallets stuffed with a never ending supply of fresh-baked bread.

“I should return it tomorrow,” Castiel said mildly. “But an extra day should not be any great hardship. We can look over the spells tomorrow. In the meantime, however,” he said, voice echoing suddenly as he stepped through the entryway, “we should start preparing for our guests.”

Great, faceted globes in the walls glowed and blazed to life, illuminating a massive room dominated by an immense slab table. The floor was smooth and swirled with colors and inset stones and metals in a gleaming mess that left Dean thinking about some of the hallucinogenic properties of the weirder drugs at wizarding universities.

“We can roll the tablecloth out,” Castiel said, flicking his tail in a precise manner that produced a large roll of cloth and sent it unfurling down the far end of the table. “As you can see, it’s large enough to seat ten or so dragons.”

Dean looked at the long sprawl of tablecloth—well over thrice the length of Castiel—and had to agree. “How do you get it to work?” he asked.

“You invoke the spell, but we’ll not do that just yet.” Castiel made his way over to the table, ambling along until he came to the part that began to be covered by the tablecloth. “You’ll sit at this end,” he said, and traced a small sign with his tail that caused a set of smoky steps to the tabletop to appear. “It is already dangerously impudent for you to be eating with us at the table, so to provide you with a stool or a chair that may put your head above anyone else’s would be disastrous.”

“It’s fine,” Dean said, unconcerned, hiking up the wispy-looking steps. He looked down the length of the table—it seemed to stretch endlessly through the long hall. “I’m not so used to eating at wayhouses that I need to put my food down to eat it.”

“Oooo, such a pretty table piece,” a familiar voice cooed from behind them. Gabriel danced in, looking immeasurably pleased with himself. “I _knew_ a dinner party was a good idea!”

“Hello Gabriel,” Castiel said, seeming faintly surprised.

“Hello Castiel,” Gabriel said cheerily, traversing the distance very quickly. He flicked his tail with an audible snap and a heavy gold cauldron the size of some of the giant pumpkins Dean had seen at county fairs in competitions appeared on the table beside him with a slight _thunk_. “Everything ready for a spectacular dinner?”

“Almost,” Castiel said calmly. A few tail twitches later and name cards in draconic script were spaced evenly down both sides the length of the tablecloth. Dean knew just enough of the writing to see that the card in front of him had his name—his full name—and some sort of unfamiliar title, which was probably ‘princess’ given his shitty luck with the joke.

“Uriel, Hester, Rachel, Balthazar, Anael, and Joshua, hmm? Fantastic group of guests,” Gabriel enthused, somehow reading all of the cards at once. “Just enough of a mixed bag that we’ll have some fun tonight.”

From the way Castiel held perfectly still for the merest breath, Dean knew his dragon had a different idea of fun than Gabriel. He suddenly hoped that this did not end badly.

But Gabriel’s early arrival seemed to be the trend for that evening. Though Castiel had told Dean blandly in an hour long cram session of dragon dinner party etiquette that arriving early was an indicator of unseemly interest (in contrast to arriving late, which was a sign of waywardness and led to severe unpleasantness), nearly everyone arrived before the designated time.

First was Balthazar, who was clearly hoping to enjoy every minute of an expected disaster. Anael appeared moments later, with enough bounce in her graceful glide to broadcast sheer excitement. Both Hester and Rachel, spring-green-pastel-pink and a dizzying white-blue-green slide that reminded Dean of glaciers, respectively, showed up a good five minutes before things were to begin, though it was the only sign of their curiosity. Joshua, a rich, royal blue that darkened to indigo, arrived exactly at the mark, a tranquil dignity; coupled with the slow movements of one who is very old, it leant him an air of otherworldliness. Lastly came Uriel, coolly calm despite the noticeable pause between Joshua’s punctuality and his own (however slight) tardy arrival.

With some shuffling to get all in place, Castiel introduced every dragon formally to Dean as “the Princess who Hunts, Dean Winchester” and expressed the hope that everyone present find the evening enjoyable. Every dragon chorused demurring thanks in response.

The meal commenced. Castiel said the incantation and the table suddenly had bowls of soup up and down it, in front of everyone. Dean’s was probably one tenth of the size of the dragons’.

With the food came polite chatter. To Dean’s surprise it was in Common, and he was treated to draconic smalltalk like “How have your flight patterns been the past few days?” and “There is fantastic hunting in the western rim these days. Everyone’s left it alone since those silly rumors about a knight popped up.” Anael and Rachel, seated on either side of Dean, had an in-depth conversation about the care and maintenance of shiny scales.

“—but tell us, Princess Dean Winchester,” Rachel suddenly broke off, slender muzzle suddenly pointing at him as he contemplated asking the tablecloth for some bread to wipe out his bowl with. “Do humans have standards of beauty that necessitate ritualistic grooming and care?”

“Well,” Dean said after a moment of horrific visions plucked eyebrows and armpits, “not that I, ah, personally need. Bathing is a standard baseline… though how often tends to vary depending on where you are,” he added almost as an afterthought, remembering weeks on the road and infrequent plunges in cold streams.

Rachel’s nostrils flared. Was she trying to smell him, or?—“So humans value bathing?” she asked.

Dean ignored the implications. “Oh, of course,” he said, keeping his tongue in check by imagining what it would feel like to have glacier-colored boots. It would be so fashionable he’d start trends. “As I was telling Castiel in your baths earlier, many cities have something similar—large public bathhouses. They’re very popular.”

“Oh, really?” Anael asked with interest. “Do you use the same magic to operate them as you do the cold boxes?”

By the time Dean was done rehashing his conversation about thermal engineering, Gabriel and Balthazar had been drawn into the conversation. Intrigued by the idea of trickery that spell-wary dragons would not expect, the two turned the discussion into an impromptu brainstorming session for prank ideas (leaving poor Rachel quite in the dust, stiffly picking her way through the meal). A fish course and three meat courses had passed (one substituted with a bowl of some sort of salad for Dean that he picked at until Castiel’s side-eyeing game had become too annoying), and some sort of fancy palate-cleansing ice thing had just been served in delicate crystal dishes with spindly stems.

“Listening in on your conversation has been quite entertaining,” Uriel said ponderously from his end of the table in the brief lull, “but perhaps something of greater substance would be worthy fare of our company.”

“Pranks don’t tickle your sense of humor?” Gabriel asked, somehow managing to wiggle the ridges over his eyes. “For shame, Uriel, you’re supposed to be the funniest of us all.”

Uriel snorted. “Your practical jokes are outside my taste in amusement, but they are entertaining in their own way,” he said, managing to sound both magnanimous and condescending at the same time. Dean honestly did not know what Castiel found so appealing in the guy. “Rather, it is something else I acknowledge, as none of you have done—this fascination with this… this _human_. A burden, foisted off on Castiel. No matter how prettily it performs, I must say I see no value in its presence.”

There was the briefest of pauses as everyone present seemed to have a ‘shit, he went there’ moment. Dean almost thought he saw something like fear in the way Castiel went completely, horribly still for the briefest of moments.

“Ah, so you’ve espoused Lucifer’s view on the subject,” Gabriel said brightly, projecting amused tolerance so hard it was obviously an act. Dean did not think the dragon leader of the garrison had missed the sly jab about Dean being dumped on Castiel as a princess. “No wonder you’ve become so dull. My brother is many things and a wretched bore when he starts raving about subjugating humanity under draconic rule is one of them.”

“I’ve never found them particularly riveting,” Anael added lightly as Dean blinked at the way Gabriel had casually dropped that. “He has many good points, but his reasoning is digressive and conclusions extreme.”

“But how can any of us deny that a return to the human lands and a restoration of the proper honors due to our superiority be less than a worthy goal?” Uriel sneered, somehow managing to look down his long snout at her.

“Well I would,” Dean said, torn between horror at the thought and outright disgust. “Give _you_ honor? You’re just a puffed-up purple pig who thinks the color of his scales means he has some claim to power over people’s lives.”

Smoke spooled out of Uriel’s nostrils. “What did you say to me, monkey?” he hissed.

_Shit_ , Dean thought distinctly as a side glance at Castiel told him his dragon had frozen up again. _I fucked up_ was followed by an icy sensation settling over him with the realization that he was one human with no weapons in a cavern full of dragons, the biggest of whom he had just severely pissed off.

“Really Uriel, did you expect any better response?” Balthazar drawled, dripping sharp disdain, and neatly redirecting all the attention to where he sat. He was the picture of a dragon at ease, lounging against his edge of the table. “Settle down, unless you want to challenge Castiel to duel over his princess’s idiocy.”

A duel between dragons? But Castiel was half his size, and Dean had said the words, surely they wouldn’t…

Dean swallowed the rest of the thought. From the way Anael and Rachel had tensed up beside him and how anal the dragons got about legalities and propriety, he had a sinking suspicion that Castiel was in very real danger—all because Dean had opened his mouth. Now it wasn’t that Dean was very fond of his dragon, he told himself, it was that Castiel was Dean’s protection from the other dragons due to that fiddly ‘thou shalt not mess with another dragon’s Princess’ stricture; with him gone, Dean would very likely not escape the cavern unless someone else took over. Someone less nice.

“This has been a very interesting dinner party, Castiel.”

It was Joshua, speaking for the first time. If Dean hadn’t been rolling on a wave of adrenalin, he would have found it creepier that every diner present quieted and gave the elderly dragon their complete attention. “I have always envied your ability to bring together a company that appreciates such vigorous debates. As we have all seen at this very table, it is clear that there is much that can be learned from interaction between our species and humankind.”

“It has been a very interesting discussion,” Castiel said agreeably. Joshua’s words seemed to have shaken him from the eerie stillness.

“Yes, it has all been _incredibly_ fascinating,” Balthazar said, impatient and insincere, “but can we please talk about something else? I was actually enjoying the topic of conversation five minutes ago before Uriel ruined it all.”

Damn. Dean was starting to like the bastard, and not in the least because every word that came out of his snarky mouth was smoothing away the tension. At Balthazar’s nonchalance, Uriel seemed to take a small step back from the thundering fury he had been in; with the combined quiet tranquility Castiel, Anael, and Joshua radiated, the large dragon started to calm down.

“Really Balthazar, must you be so self-absorbed?” Rachel snarked right back at him. “The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know.”

“We could always send him to live on the sun,” Gabriel suggested with a look of slyness.

“A worthy goal,” Castiel said dryly. “We’re such good friends we’ll change his reality to fit his perceptions, and elect to suffer in the absence of his sunny presence.”

The dragons laughed at that. Even Uriel emitted a small chortle, puffing remnants of smoke that quickly dispersed in the air of the cavern.

The remainder of the party passed slowly and without much participation on Dean’s part; the dragons seemed to have decided to ignore him. It was boring, but after letting his tongue get away from him Dean was perfectly happy not to have any more opportunities to get Castiel in fights, or worse.

Dean was working hard to hide yawns when everyone finally left and Castiel started to clean the room of, he supposed, whatever traces of a dinner party there had been, though it seemed to largely consist of magically rolling up the tablecloth and whistling a few odd notes here and there that caused little puffs of dust to rise from the floor.

“Sorry about tonight,” he said when it had all been finished to Castiel’s satisfaction.

“For what?” Castiel asked, blinking at him.

“For almost getting you in trouble,” Dean said bluntly, and looked at the floor. “I didn’t realize about the duel challenging or anything, I just thought—”

“Uriel poses a significant challenge, yes,” Castiel said calmly, “but I do not think he would ever have actually demand a duel. We have been friends for quite a while.”

“But—” Dean stopped. He wasn’t sure how to put it without sounding stupid, but he tried anyway. “I trapped you and got you in trouble when I was caught escaping,” he said slowly. “And tonight—you stayed out of it, I mean, but it looked like you were, uh.” Dean swallowed. “Afraid.”

Castiel stared at him unblinkingly, tail suspended as though it was momentarily too startled to move.

“Um,” Dean said intelligently. “Or… not?”

“I find I have grown accustomed to your presence,” Castiel said, head tilting to the side. “I would have been—unhappy, if it was your death that ended it.”

“Oh,” Dean said, unsure of how to respond to that while sudden warmth curled inside his chest. “Thanks. You too.”

“It is still a half-hour walk back to my den,” Castiel said blandly. “We should go before you fall asleep.”


	6. Fallout: New Dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY FOR THE LONG BREAK. AND THE SHORT CHAPTER. I intended to post all this before I left the country in December, but that did not happen... and then other events happened and long story short I'M ENGAGED AHHH but AHHHH THIS STILL HASN'T BEEN POSTED

The immediate consequence of the dinner party was that Dean did not get out of the cave for a week. Castiel promptly set them on the task of picking apart the spells on the giantess’s tablecloth, pulling out several massive codices and actual piles of assorted scrolls and teaching Dean small, neat tricks, like how to make an ointment that allowed the user to see magic at varying levels and a spell for dictation, to use with treated parchment or paper (for the making of which another spell was imparted).

“It’s probably for the best if we don’t go out too much,” Castiel explained apologetically on the third day after Dean mentioned the fact that Castiel had only left his den once since the dinner, as though Dean was the one upset by not getting out when he was not even used to leaving the den often for things other than escaping, baths, and dinner parties. “Just until the gossip dies down in the garrison.”

“It got that far?” Dean said, only a little surprised. The few times Anael had come over pre-dinner, she and Castiel had gossiped like fishwives.

“I heard sixteen separate conversations the other day,” the dragon said dryly. “A human with the temerity to speak back to Uriel? You have no idea how exciting it is.”

“Don’t you guys talk back to him?” Dean wanted to know, squinting at a close-written passage in shorthand on symbolic properties of elements in prepared artifacts. “He’s not the nicest guy, you know.”

Castiel shrugged, the movement a smooth ripple of scaly hide that winked in the light, and pointed to a line on his scroll. “What do you think about this passage?” he asked, and read it aloud.

Despite Castiel being closemouthed on the subject, Dean could not help but notice that something was off. For starters, the only one who came over to visit was Balthazar, who snaked by for a hissing chat in dragon with Castiel that lasted five minutes and was held in the kitchen, out of Dean’s sight, on the fourth day. During the times Castiel was picking apart the complex weave of glowing letters that ran through the tablecloth and inspecting the slubs of a few individual strands of spellwork here and there, the usual enthusiasm Dean had noticed in the dragon’s work previously had been replaced by an almost imperceptible undercurrent of tension. Maybe it was just because Dean had more of a reason to pay attention now, but there was always an extra twitch animating Castiel’s tail tip these days, and sometimes Dean would turn to address the dragon and find him looking particularly unknowable with half-lidded eyes and rigidity of frame directly at odds with his characteristic feline grace.

They were especially noticeable on the two occasions Castiel had left the cave, like when he went hunting on the second day. When he returned from his bathing/hunting expedition on the fifth and promptly mixed up the _qaf_ and _fa_ factors in a string of spell, Dean knew something was wrong.

“Cas, are you okay?” he asked the dragon seriously as Cas contorted his neck to peer so closely at the spell line Dean was worried he’d get dirt in his eye or something.

“Of course,” the dragon responded immediately, eye swiveling up to pin Dean with that slit-pupil stare of especial innocence. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re acting like Sam when he blows something up by accident and is trying to fix it before anyone figures out it’s broken,” Dean said, not even bothering to hide his frown.

“We still haven’t returned this tablecloth,” Castiel said mildly. “Even with the extension I was granted, it is rude to keep it so long.”

Dean scowled. “We’re almost finished deconstructing the spell,” he growled. “There’s no _way_ that’s what’s been bothering you the past few days.”

Just as Castiel opened his mouth to say something else there was a _halloo_ from the entrance and a familiar peaches-and-cream Gabriel strolled in. “Castiel!” he beamed, showing every one of his sharp teeth. “How wonderful it is to see you again.”

“Gabriel,” Castiel in greeting, edgily. Dean stared—the dragon was thrumming tension he hadn’t had ten seconds before. “What brings you here?”

“The same thing we discussed the other day,” Gabriel said lazily and snapped his tail. Light skittered along the wards encasing Castiel’s cave and thickened the briefly-illuminated spells. 

“No,” Castiel said flatly, abandoning the niceties of draconic culture. Dean was actually mildly shocked, and was shocked even more by how Castiel had started to—bridle? Did dragons even bridle? Well Castiel was doing it and his wings were loosely shaking themselves out too, and it was very hard to mistake it as anything but a sign of aggression.

“Easy there, fluffbutt,” Gabriel said, abruptly all business, and switched immediately to the hissing syllables of dragon speech. Castiel hesitated after a few seconds, seeming to settle a bit as his wings stopped their aggressive expansion and twitched confusedly.

“Are you sure we can’t—” he began, and stopped. “No, I understand.”

“These things take time,” Gabriel said seriously, a peculiar emphasis on his words. “No decisions will be reached before the end of three days.”

Castiel looked sharply at him and did not say anything.

“Three days,” Gabriel repeated. He snapped his tail again and there was a slight pop when the wards flashed and dimmed. And then, with a lazy smile, he said “Bring anything you’ll need for the remainder of the day—once we enter the hall, the proceedings will not cease for twelve hours.”

“Wait, what?” Dean said sharply. “Hold up, what’s going on?”

“Michael of the West and Lucifer of the East have come to Gabriel’s range,” Castiel said, sounding disturbingly grim. “They are here to rule on whether or not your position as my princess is—proper.”

There seemed to be a moment stretching out, frozen time; then—

“I can’t even begin to explain to you why I am absolutely not doing this,” Dean said flatly.

“Okay,” Gabriel said. _Snap!_

It must have been Gabriel’s tail doing that weird snappy thingy and goddamn Dean was going to _fucking murder that sonuvabitch how dare he_ because suddenly, Dean couldn’t move his arms. Or his legs. Or his head, or blink, or do much except breathe extremely shallowly and was that actually just an extreme slowing spell? (He only wondered because the faint whine that emerged and grew louder within the next two minutes was definitely him trying to scream, and he’d stop it if he could but apparently that was not possible.)

“Go ahead and pack for him,” Gabriel ordered Castiel. “I’m sure you know what your human needs to operate by now.”

Castiel, looking slightly like a giant pincushion with all his spines and scales bristled out, did so silently. Dean was not really in a position to be able to tell what was happening, but Castiel reemerged into his field of view shortly with a small wallet, which he draped over Dean’s shoulder. “Ready,” the dragon said curtly.

The journey following was some sort of nightmarish parody of Dean’s original introduction to the caves. Gabriel insisted they unfreeze him for the barest second it took for him to reorient himself straddling the juncture of Cas’s neck and shoulders to “look natural” before Gabriel immediately froze him back in place and used the spell equivalent of glue to keep him stuck there. The walk was nauseating hell of tilting from side to side and not being able to correct, meaning Dean spent a great amount of time getting poked by Cas’s hackle spines, which still hadn’t smoothed down. Dean cursed the Ismael’s Blowfish Effect Gabriel ca,st because he spent eighty-five percent of the trip feeling nauseous and the last quarter of it in horrific real time perception of the fact that he was in the process of vomiting the contents of his stomach without actually bringing anything up until the last few minutes—a slow dribble of disgusting fluids that only furthered his desires to skin Gabriel’s ugly orange hide and have sex on it with a thousand random people after dragging it through every tanning pit in existence and letting the remnants of his bloody dragon carcass rot.

His preoccupations with his bodily functions aside, Dean could not help but notice that the corridors were empty of any traffic. There was no one to watch as they moved through the wide dragon hallways to an area Dean had not visited yet.

The last few minutes were a confused blur of sick feelings and violation. When Gabriel released the spell, the physical effects of the ride caught up with Dean all at once. He was noisily sick and groping for a weapon, any kind of weapon, when he realized that Castiel had lifted his wings impressively (for a dragon’s stance) and in such a way that it blocked Dean from the view of anyone looking in his direction save from directly in front of them or behind them. Or those above him, seeing as they had entered some sort of long open hall set up reminiscent to a human judicial court, and Castiel had presented his sides to those before him (three dragons, one familiar, on a dais in the center of a cleared arena) and those behind and above him and around the back of the arena (a riotous mass of scales and wings and spikes and glittering eyes that constituted more dragons Dean had ever seen in his life, gathered in tiers and towering balconies). Following the rows and rows of dragons upward and outward, Dean was momentarily greeted by a glimpse of blue sky.

Dean felt the mess down his front vanish with the faint _whip_ of magic and energy course into his system as Castiel gently curled his tail around him and set him on the floor. He stood stiffly, restraining himself with difficulty, trying not to give face to the mix of shock and delight at his first sight of open sky in over a month as he faced the dais.

The three dragons before them were… immense. Gabriel was one of them but Dean had never seen him like this: on the dais he radiated authority and power that rendered his smaller physical size immaterial. The other two dragons were larger, but that too was not important when the air literally hummed around their snow-gilt and kingfisher-wine colorations.

“Lucifer is the white and gold,” Castiel whispered to Dean. “Michael is the blue and red.”

“So?” Dean growled, anger flaring back through him.  “I’m going to kill Gabriel for that trick.”

“They’re the other leaders of the garrisons,” Castiel said, ignoring Dean. “Michael is _Akbar_ , the first of us. Lucifer is _Al’ma’,_ the brightest.”

The one in the middle—Michael—slapped his tail on the floor with a crack. The susurrus of dragons whispering through the huge chamber quieted as the dragon began to speak, all harsh clicks and flat vowels and hissing sibilants.

“He’s calling the conclave together,” Castiel murmured very quietly, “to discuss the presence of humans in dragon lands once more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M WORKING ON THE END NOW HANG ON LITTLE TOMATOES


	7. Ducking Dragons

The Conclave was boring in that frustratingly glacial-slow way that ground on and on and on. Dean knew dragons liked to debate, but he hadn’t realized just _how much_ they could _talk_.

It was in the middle of the third day and approaching the last session of the trial. Dean’s anger and betrayal over the humiliating ride never faded so much as got folded into the subsequent worry, astonishment, and persistent low grade panic that followed over the next few days, but eventually Dean managed to shove it all down and down until he entered the static waiting mode he used for long periods of riding and charging spells.

He planned, or tried too; he didn’t need to follow the blow-by-blow details of the trial to prepare for the probable outcomes. Not that he knew what they were anyway, as the proceedings were conducted entirely in draconic and Cas had stopped translating everything but the salient points after Lucifer had built his case from a platform of ‘humanity is dangerous and encroaching’ and called for a concerted attack on humankind, to which several voices had responded with affirmations and suggestions for how to start with Dean. When Dean didn’t plan he slept, and when he didn’t sleep he played improvised card games with the tarot deck Castiel had packed in the wallet-of-many-things, and when he didn’t play cards he seethed at Castiel not giving him the wallet (he would have liked to know if there was anything useful in it, because his only known resources were what he was wearing). And so it went.

The first few hours of the trial told Dean that his freedom was no longer up for debate according to the dragons. The great meeting began with a speech from Michael, who droned on for a while about the history of dragon-human relations and the implications of Dean’s presence in the mountains. It was the use of phrases like “time honored traditions” and “violated egregiously” and “chaotic effect this novelty causes” that were disturbing, but the phrases that came later like “containment versus termination” and “rethinking isolation” and “inappropriate handler” were depressing.

So Dean planned for eventualities. Either he would be killed, or he would be spared. If the dragons ruled that execution was warranted, Dean doubted there was a lot he could do unless they didn’t do it on the spot and he had a chance to get into a less dragon-populated area where he could try to escape into the tunnels. He would probably still die, but that way it would be alone, in the dark, and after a few days of starvation and dehydration.

If Dean was spared, the question then became one of ownership and whether or not Castiel would be permitted to keep him. Dean didn’t think that was likely since Michael seemed bent on taking Dean for himself, and Dean wasn’t sure how dragon politics usually went but the chances a regular dragon had against a dragon called ‘the greatest’ didn’t seem that great. (Dean found himself more upset over not living with Cas than being stuck living with dragons and had to sit for a moment and think about that, because what the hell? Who gets upset over getting taken away from their captors? Even if Cas was more of a friend than a captor at this point…)

That had all been discussed in detail yesterday. Today was Lucifer’s day, and he was reprising his earlier theme of war with humanity. The dragon audience wasn’t quite responding with enthusiasm, but there was a dark undertone to the crowd that Dean was succeeding marvelously at ignoring.

Just as Dean cursed the eight that wasn’t red in his fifty-sixth game of Solitaire, Michael smacked his tail up on the dais and cut through Lucifer’s impassioned speech with the impressive declaration that translated to “break time, bitches.” The assemblage rustled as everyone simultaneously stretched their wings and tails and everything else. Castiel flicked out his wings, resettled brusquely, and turned his massive head to look inquiringly at Dean.

Dean humphed out a sigh. “Fine,” he groused, then gathered the cards into some sort of order and stuffed the deck down the front of his tunic before getting up and stretching.

There had been recesses six or seven times already, granting a span of a few hours to dragons to eat or attend private business, but Dean had not been permitted leave the great volcano shell and Castiel elected to stay with him. The dragon also insisted they take the time to wander sections of the floors and tiers lining the great hall to pass the time, and brought the magic tablecloth out of the wallet for things to snack on.

Dean wasn’t very interested in moving amongst the hundreds of chattering dragons who had also chosen to stay, clearly making the most of the social and legal event of the century but getting together with old friends from other places. Many of the attendees were members of the other two garrisons, drawn by the prospect of seeing a human, but the vast majority of the audience seemed simply to want to enjoy a spectacle with friends. As a distant Castiel explained on the first walk, dragons were avid followers of legal procedures and anything complicated was extremely intriguing. The fact that three garrisons were involved just meant that there were more dragons to hang out with while things went on, and the end result was a situation a million times worse than the trip to the baths—so much so that Dean had refused to do more than walk the arena twice after the first attempt.

Dean hated this, hated being talked about as though he weren’t there, hated being quibbled over like a _thing_ as though he was of no consequence. Not that important human nobility were that much better, but at least in the human world Dean had the freedom to go where he wanted to go and he was respected for his hunting abilities. But Castiel’s indifferent acceptance and subsequent abandonment to stroll anyway didn’t make Dean feel any better, and being alone in the arena turned out to be worse than walking amongst spectators, so since the fourth break Dean had grimly plodded along beside the silent dragon.

Dean didn’t say anything to Castiel as they walked, though it wasn’t because he didn’t have anything to say. Dean wasn’t asked to speak at all during the trial, nor was he offered any chances to do so, and Gabriel flipped his tail threateningly every time Dean had started to say anything to the dragons on the dais. Castiel spoke when he was called on to explain his decision to take Dean as his princess, but was constrained mostly to yes or no questions. Together, they had hardly discussed what was going on even though Dean brought it up multiple times.

That was the worst part of the whole thing. Apparently, Castiel had decided to distance himself from his dangerous human princess around the start of the trial. Apart from his translations, he spared no conversation for Dean during the proceedings and his short, bland responses during their time together in the breaks infuriated Dean until Dean eventually gave up trying to talk.  Angry (and upset, but don’t tell Sam), Dean could only guess at Castiel’s motives for suddenly being a total dick, but it pissed him off anyway.

Stewing in his own thoughts, Dean was startled out of his reverie when Castiel took them through some stands filled with members of Lucifer’s garrison, the cold dislike and softly malevolent draconic speech creating a palpable chill. Dean changed his stance until he walked like he was ready to start a fight and aggressively ignored the lot—not presenting a target, but not engaging. He knew he wouldn’t survive if they decided to jump him.

The ugly atmosphere felt a lot worse with Castiel’s indifference at his back.

“If you’d wanted some company, I’d’ve thought you’d have better taste,” Dean growled when some of the crowd started catcalling as they passed, every nerve singing with tension. For gods’ sake, it would have been nice to see _Balthazar_ at this point. But _nooo_ , Castiel was scrupulously avoiding his friends and there had been neither sight nor scale of any of them.

“I didn’t want company,” Castiel said coolly, a trickle of smoke escaping his nostrils.

That small sign of temper touched off the ugly riot of feelings inhabiting Dean’s stomach. “Dude, if you didn’t want me to come on your stupid stroll you didn’t have to invite me,” he snapped.

Castiel’s tail curled lightly around his wrist before he noticed it moving, and Dean felt a brief flood of emotions that weren’t his as Castiel sent a small pulse of magic rolling through his bones—tense watchfulness, warning, apprehension, caution. _Wait_ …

“Get off me,” Dean said and swatted the tail away, shock easily steamrolled by anger.

There was sudden silence; the hair prickled on the back of Dean’s neck. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to swat dragons in front of members of Lucifer’s garrison.

“Mud monkey giving you trouble, little brother?” The voice that oozed from behind was disgustingly smarmy and weirdly familiar.

Castiel stopped and twisted around to acknowledge the newcomer, Dean reluctantly following suit. “Hello, Zachariah. It is not.”

Dean’s skin crawled, both at Castiel referring to him as ‘it’ as well as the memory of the first time Dean met this dragon. Unlike before, Dean could actually see him this time—a glitteringly hard green dragon about the same size as Gabriel, with scales gilded flashily at the edges. His jaws seemed to be naturally sneering.

“If anything,” Castiel added, “it was I who caused the trouble.”

Zachariah snorted, a billow of smoke washing over Dean and making him cough. “These creatures aren’t worth such consideration,” he said, sounding amused. “Don’t tell me—next you’ll be apologizing to it.”

“Fortunately, I feel no need for an apology,” Castiel said diffidently. Dean hated him at that moment. “What brings you to the Eastern garrison’s stands?”

Zachariah schmoozed, a casual flip of his tail indicating two large dragons in the second row who glowered at Dean. “Oh, reacquainting myself with some friends. You know how difficult it is to catch up when we’re all so busy working around the home range.”

“It is,” Castiel remarked, and nodded in an excusing way. “It was nice speaking with you again.”

Dean looked back briefly to see Zachariah coolly watching them as Dean and Castiel continued to the end of the stand. The sudden silent violent scrutiny began to ease as whispering started up; by the time he and Castiel were in the neighboring stand, the tension had eased and the volume was approaching its former level.

Dean found nothing that could allow him to relax after that. As though being the sudden focus of draconic hatred and the off encounter with Zachariah had triggered all the worry and fear he buried through the trial, Dean found that when the last session commenced he was unable to do anything but stare blankly at the three dragons on the dais and hope to the gods that his shaking hands weren’t noticeable in his lap. The end was nigh and there was no hiding from it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Lucifer capped his oratory off three hours into the session with sneering disdain, and it was then that Gabriel sat up from the indolent sprawl he’d spent most of the trial in and started to speak. The crowd, slightly restless after Lucifer’s snooze fest, went silent.

“ _A’dil_ puts forth his judgment,” Castiel murmured to Dean, and this time translated everything.

“My sisters and brothers,” Gabriel began (and Castiel muttered) in utter silence, “we have spent three days discussing the benefits of humankind and whether or not we should reject the tradition of the past few centuries, even going so far as to propose war.

“I think we are distracted from the case set before us. These ‘greater implications’ brought up by _Akbar_ and _Al’ma’_ are necessary to bear in mind but not truly pertinent to this case. One human will not destabilize our entire order simply by being present, and one human is not evidence of a larger thrust into our territory as an invasion. Many humans, introduced to our society, may create change, and many humans foraying for purposes of conquest will certainly cause war, but this is still only one human we speak of today.

“It is obvious that this human cannot be permitted simply to leave, although I doubt he would be convincing enough to cause either an influx of human population or army in our vicinity if he was.” (There was a ripple of amusement from the crowd at this point.)

“Our brother Castiel’s decision to take this human as his princess is in keeping with older traditions than those formed in our past few centuries, and I can hardly envision anything more draconic than in Castiel’s decision to uphold these traditions.” (More amusement.) “Castiel has not acted dishonorably in this regard, and as this acquisition was entirely by chance, any real or imagined danger caused by this human’s presence is unintentional. Moreover, it has been clear throughout these proceedings, witnessed by many of you—and in his actions outside of this hall, witnessed by myself—that Castiel has not gone beyond the bounds of draconic hospitality with regards to the human and is unlikely to be persuaded to any human cause. However, were there to suddenly be many dragons acquiring princesses I would think there be a cause for revisiting this matter, as that would certainly bring about changes in our society.” (This time the amusement was thoughtful and the crowd started to buzz.)

“Nevertheless, I do not see Dean’s life necessarily be forfeit simply for living in our mountains as Castiel’s princess. Thus I conclude that though this convocation has raised many important topics with regards to our future and the future of humankind, in the matter of propriety of Castiel’s acquisition there is no doubt that Castiel is within his rights to have this princess on the grounds that he adheres to tradition.”

Gabriel settled back into his lounge and the buzz became a roar as practically every dragon seemed to start speaking at once. “Gabriel is usually the arbiter,” Castiel said loudly to Dean over the noise, “and his judgment often is the most laconic and pragmatic of the three. So it is a little surprising that he is upholding the plaint of the original claimant—that’s us—over a compromise.”

“Wait a minute,” Dean said disbelievingly as Michael smacked his tail repeatedly in an attempt to bring things to order. “You’ve been a dick during this whole trial so it wouldn’t look—” he fumbled for an appropriate word— “I dunno, improper? Draconically improper??”

“Shhh, Dean,” Castiel said. “ _Akbar_ puts forth the questions of the ruling to _Al’ma’_ and _A’dil_.”

The crowd had quieted enough that Michael could stop pounding the floor and speak and be heard. Castiel resumed his translation. “Brothers, shall the human be spared?”

“Yes,” said Gabriel.

“No,” said Lucifer.

“I vote yes,” said Michael. There was a brief clamor from the dragons in the stands, but it was quietly hushed by other members of the audience. Dean breathed out slowly, unsure if he was relieved he wasn’t going to be executed or if he was glad Cas didn’t actually hate him. Probably both, because being happier about being friends with a dragon over not getting killed was a little over the top.

Cas was speaking again, echoing the things Michael was saying, but Dean was still absorbed enough in this momentary self-reflection not to pay any attention until he heard “…in the keeping of a dragon other than Castiel.”

“Wait, what?” Dean said loudly.

“Castiel,” said Gabriel.

“Another,” said Lucifer. Even from here, Dean could see the slow smile spreading across the dragon’s muzzle. Castiel hissed something under his breath, and then so quietly Dean almost didn’t hear it, “Dean, stay close.”

“Another,” boomed Michael. “One of us?”

“Oh _hell—_ ” Dean started, before he heard the echo of a snap and his mouth closed like a trap. Once again Dean was frozen in place, this time stuck staring at the dragons in the dais; Gabriel glowered at him with something like foreboding.

“They’re going to give you to Michael,” Castiel said tersely behind him. “I almost wish they’d voted for execution.”

Dean would have made a noise of shock if the stupid blowfish spell wasn’t on him. The dragons were clamoring again and Dean saw Michael look at him, expression ineffably smug.

There was a massive bang. The shock reverberated through the volcano cone and slammed into Dean like a physical force, sending him staggering back with sharp pains in his ears. The world turned nauseatingly as he fell to one knee, hands going to his ears in useless instinct, and then everything went black.

Dean came back to when there was an awful lurch and his chin slammed on hard little scales and oh shit oh shit oh shit they were flying they must be flying, he was sitting on Castiel’s back and Castiel was _flying_. He scrambled to get a hold on anything and wound up gripping some of the dragon’s neck spines, which hardly seemed like safe handholds. It was creepily silent with only the stupid ringing from the concussive blast because whatever that blast was must’ve shattered his eardrums and he still couldn’t _see_ and oh gods, he was going to be sick.

He could feel the powerful thrusting that must be Castiel’s wings, actually flapping instead of gliding over pitiful dark abysses and Dean can’t believe he actually just thought that. He’s sick and probably noisily so except he _can’t fucking hear_ and then light strikes him almost as hard as the sound did because it’s still midafternoon and they’re so high they’re approaching the top of the blasted-open volcano that the court was held in.

Dean looked down. Roiling black smoke blanketed the crater over where the court was held and they were rising, soaring, and then they skated right over the lip of the opening so close Dean could count the flowers on a late-spring blooming creeper.

The wind against his face is the horrific force that barrels into Castiel and sends the dragon sailing up and up and up like an eagle. He must be keeping Dean seated through magic because there is no possible way Dean could stay on by anything short of elaborate rope ties or glue. This time, he manages to control the heaving, though it costs him a few moments.

His hearing started coming back a little. Wind whooshed, Castiel’s wings flapped. Faintly, the echoes of panicking dragons came from behind for a moment, before they shot forward at a speed that made Dean feel ill.

“What,” Dean screamed over the wind and his rising gorge, “are you doing, you _massive flaming chicken_??”

“Escaping!” Castiel shouted back.

The world tilted. Dean flailed, but stayed seated as Castiel pulled into a shallow dive that sent them hurtling through the air at the ground. They skimmed down the northern rolling foothills dotted with trees and small shrubs that blurred as they passed, and barreled over the open flatland abutting the wooded southern range and startled a trio of deer. Then Castiel swooped and made a landing that seemed mostly like lots of bounding and they were crashing through the thick forest.

“Here. Go,” Castiel said, yanking him off and throwing the magic wallet at him via whippy tail. “The talisman on the red ribbon will hide you from dragonsight and the one on the blue will make you unnoticeable in everything else.”

“What? No, what do you mean—”

“The blasts and darkness will keep them for fifteen minutes and the flight spells earned us another ten,” Castiel panted, butting Dean’s head with his own. The dizziness and the pain in his ears vanished. “I’ll lead them on a chase; I can promise you three hours. The closest human habitation is fifteen miles west of here; there’s a road in seven miles. Go quickly!”

“Now wait a minute,” Dean said, trying for calm and mostly hitting it. “You can’t do that—”

The dragon wriggled through the trees and turned a clawing scramble up into a leap that catapulted him back in the sky.

“What the shit!” Dean yelled after him. He sprinted forward to where Cas had gone and realized that was stupid, because running further into the trees wouldn’t let him see more of the skyline, so he picked an oak that looked likely and scrabbled his way to the top as near as he could reach it in record time until he could see a bit more because those dragons aren’t going to be happy when they catch up, Cas violated like twenty dragon laws and they are going to absolutely murder him, he shouldn’t do this for Dean—

He was too late; the sky was empty.

Dean cursed. Then, shakily, he half-climbed, half-fell out of the tree to the ground.

He fished the talismans out of the wallet and pulled them over his head, noting that the tablecloth was there, plus a sword, plus some gold, some scrolls, and a few other odds and ends. Dean had to breathe for a moment, to firmly shove all of what happened over the past three days and the entire past month down _hard_.

He pointed himself west and started moving, the jog-walk pace that gets people places the most economically, and blocked out everything except getting to Sam. It was a familiar goal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaaaaaaand there will probably be an epilogue, too...


End file.
